Channel 2's Weather Bench Really Sings

You don’t need Channel 4’s Pope Don Paul, Channel 2’s Kevin O’Connell or Channel 7’s Aaron Mentkowski to do the weather in Western New York.

Anybody can do it.

That’s long been the theory around here anyway.

After all, it’s the easiest job in the world because nobody expects you to be right more than half the time anyway.

If it is sunny when you predict rain or vice versa, weathercasters can just hide behind the line “well, that’s Buffalo, wait 20 seconds and things are bound to change.”

Channel 2 took the theory further Monday when reporter-anchor Josh Boose did the weather on the station. Before that, I thought his only weather experience was standing near the Skyway on the first snowfall of the winter and telling viewers it was a mess out there. The Skyway snow story is a rite of passage for local newscasters.

The NBC affiliate’s weather roster includes O’Connell, Andy Parker, Autumn Lewandowski, Maria Genero and Mary Beth Wrobel. And yet here was Boose doing the weather. And doing a very presentable and clear job.

Of course, it wasn’t too hard to say it is going to be nice today. The sun is out as I write this so Boose’s batting average is higher than Paul’s this month.

Just when I began thinking that Boose was proving how easy the job is, along comes anchor Maryalice Demler to tell 11 p.m. viewers before another Boose performance that the guy actually has weather experience.

Who knew?

“He did weather in Michigan before he came to our station,” said Channel 2 General Manager Jim Toellner. He added that Boose has done weather several times before on weekends.

“He’s always made himself available when we needed him to do weather,” said Toellner.

The weather experience isn’t in Boose’s Channel 2 bio on his blog, though there are some other interesting things in it. He is a graduate of the Ohio Center for Broadcasting and he studied classical voice at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.

Makes you wonder if Boose and Wrobel (who also studied voice, plays classical piano and flute and sings) could do a duet together while doing the weather some day.

* You can even get some news while taking a day off to golf. At a University at Buffalo function Monday, I learned it is very unlikely that former Bill Lou Piccone will be back next season as the analyst for UB football. Smart move that. Piccone proved last season that being an analyst isn’t as easy as being a weatherman.

* Channel 2 recently ran a feature on sports director Ed Kilgore’s plan to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro with a team of climbers to raise money for “Kids Escaping Drugs.” Apparently, he’s done a lot of training, including some time in high altitude Denver. I don’t know if that’s the reason why Adam Benigni and Ben Hayes have anchored the sports segments so frequently lately. But if so, let’s hope Ed keeps training hard.

Actually, Kilgore is on vacation this week. So are O’Connell and “Daybreak” co-anchor John Beard. That’s a lot of key staffers off at the same time, but they are all on vacation together. The three friends have done that for years, even when Beard was living in Los Angeles.

* South Buffalo’s Patrick Kane brought the Stanley Cup to “The Tonight Show” Monday night with three Chicago Black Hawk teammates and didn’t do one taxi cab joke. Smart move. In a Channel 2 interview Monday, Scotty Bowman, who is a consultant to the Hawks, defended Kane’s jokes last week at the Chicago victory parade. Sorry, Scotty, it wasn’t smart for the kid to make light of a serious matter that damaged his image.