Bring back Sonny Eliot

When I was a wee lad, there was a guy in Detroit named Sonny Eliot who did the weathercast on WWJ-TV. Sonny was a local personality, a guy who cracked bad jokes and made funny sounds during a 3-4 minute segment on the news. In the end, he mixed in a few temps and told us what the next day might be like.

Funny thing was, he was usually right in telling us if it would rain or snow the next day would entail.

Today's weather folks are different. They have some type of seal they get (perhaps from a cereal box) and they can show up impressive videos. They can discuss El Ninos with great enthusiasm.

But they can't seem to tell us how much snow we are going to get and when we will get it.

For two days around the Twin Cities, they issued dire warnings to batten down the hatches. Snow and sleet were coming and there would be a lot of it. Their years of with the seal said so.

Didn't happen. We got about an inch of snow and the roads were fine to travel. Today, they are busy falling all over themselves explaining why they were really correct in their prediction and that Doppler Radar really is a good thing/

Me? I say bring back Sonny Eliot, who probably called the weather bureau about an hour before he went on the air and asked what was up for the next day or so. In the end, he might have been wrong about the forecast as well. But he would have made us smile in the process.