Jim Cantore Seems To Enjoy Thundersnow

Jim Cantore awestruck during a thunder snowstorm
in Chicago back in 2011. He was in heaven this
weekend as thundersnow hit during his live
reports during a Massachusetts blizzard.  

UPDATE: See new video below the Cantore Thundersnow Montage video in this post. Totally awesome follow up video from someone else.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION: I usually give all the full weather updates on my sister blog, Matt's Weather Rapport, but I have to post something about the weather here.

The Weather Channel's iconic storm reporter/meteorologist, Jim Cantore, is in Massachusetts covering the epic blizzard.

Rule of thumb: If Jim Cantore is in your town, you're screwed. You're in for a terrible, terrible, awful storm/disaster.

Anyway, Jim's favorite weather appears to be a combination of snow, thunder and lightning.

While reporting overnight and this morning on the snow in and around Plymouth, Massachusetts, the sky occasionally lit up with lightning amid the dense clouds of falling and blowing snow.

Judging from the video you'll see below, Cantore is somewhat enthusiastic about the lightning. (Glad he didn't have a heart attack. Or get struck. )

As Dennis Mersereau of the Gawker weather page The Vane put it in a Tweet today, "Anyone who doesn't understand the passion that weather geeks hold for the weather needs to watch Jim Cantore run around in thundersnow."

The video is hilarious though. I like people who can work up this level of enthusiasm:



As Cantore's thundersnow montage video went viral Sunday, Cantore himself Tweeted the following video that demonstrates just how contagious the Weather Channel meteorologist's enthusiasm is:

Photobomb Storm: Weather Channel's Jim Cantore Stirs Up His Own High Pressure System

Lots of people are talking today about The Weather Channel's Jim Cantore's deft kick to the idiot who tried to photobomb him during a live broadcast in ice storm struck Charleston, South Carolina.

Jim Cantore, left, gives a moron a swift,
well deserved knee to the crotch.

It's so common, so cliched, so annoying to see morons try to gain attention during a reporter's live broadcast.

So it was nice to see Cantore's nonchalant but well aimed microburst of a knee to the kid's nether regions when the kid ran screaming into the live shot.

The forecast for this photobombing jerk: Dense brain fog, a wind chill advisory for the cold glance Cantore also gave him, and a tornado warning for the storm of media attention this idiot will get if he's identified. 

The kid didn't appear to get hurt, which is kind of too bad.  I wonder what his parents think of this national exposure of their idiot kid.

They must be so proud. 

Had he wanted to, Cantore is probably capable of doing some physical damage to somebody if he wanted to.

When I knew him in college he was a weight training and fitness buff, and judging from the tight shirts he sometimes wears on air, Cantore, at age 49, still finds his way into the gym now and then, to put it mildly. 

People call Cantore a bad ass anyway, because he always positions himself in the worst storms you can get. Everyone knows that if he shows up in your town, you're screwed. Because it means you are about to get the Storm From Hell. 

Cantore's arrival means you should be prepared for a 300 mph tornado in the middle of a hurricane that drops a blizzard with ten feet of snow, with the temperature plummeting to 200 below zero in the morning and rising to a high of 350 degrees in the afternoon. Throw in a dust storm, too. And locusts. 

We do need to make reporters' live shots more interesting. Especially when they're outside in terrible weather telling us the obvious: That's it's raining. Or windy. Or snowing. Or there's a tornado coming. 

So I think most television reporters and meteorologists should get training in mixed martial arts. Wouldn't it have been fun if Cantore, instead of just kneeing the idiot kid and letting it be, really went after him, in a supercell thunderstorm kind of way? With the kid returning the blows?

The fight would have been particularly fun to watch with all that ice underfoot from the storm Cantore was reporting on.  A combination of Olympic ice dancing figure skating with World Wrestling Entertainment. 

For what it's worth, here's the video clip of Cantore's debut as an MME champ: