It’s either a storm, or someone spilled coffee on the weather map

NORMAN, OK—When Tad Shapiro first joined the KOKI Channel 12 news team last fall, he considered the opportunity signaled that he had reached the pinnacle of his career as in meteorology. As chief meteorologist on the number one station in one of the largest markets in the region, Shapiro knew he would have a high profile. But he never dreamed that high profile would put him in the crosshairs of the viewing public.

“I came out here from Southern California,” Shapiro says, “The weather’s pretty easy out there. Pretty even keeled. But this region is known for its unstable weather patterns. The best meteorologists in the world work this region. A weatherman is like a rock star here. I thought it would be a great opportunity to prove my mettle.”

Shapiro’s tenure got off to a bumpy start when he wrongly predicted several heavy snowfalls over an uncharacteristically mild winter. After the fourth inaccurate prediction in a seven-day span, his confidence was shaken.

“All the data indicated we were going to be hit by a fuck-ton of snow, over and over,” Shapiro claims, “But it never happened. That last time, a huge snowstorm was blasting the town not 20 miles away, and then it just disappeared before it got here. Just totally vanished.”

Shapiro says he finally just started ignoring the data and began issuing daily 30% precipitation chances. Then, on May 2nd, he noticed a suspicious–looking weather pattern that indicated a chance of snow.

“Snow? In May in Oklahoma? The guys at the other stations were actually reporting it, but not me. I’d been bit too many times,” Shapiro says, “It was 85 degrees out and these guys were calling for a 100% chance of snow. I just did my usual ‘high in the mid-70s with a 30% chance of rain’. But I didn’t sleep a wink that night.”

Shapiro’s worries were realized when he awoke the following morning to six inches of snow and a temperature of 24 degrees. His station sanctioned Twitter account was temporarily shut down following an inundation of threatening Tweets and he lost over 3,000 friends on Facebook. But at work, he was treated the same as any other day.

“I was expecting to be fired, or worse,” says Shapiro, “But nobody said anything about the weather. My bosses were even smiling at me more than usual. It almost felt like I was the victim of a prank. I’m still fairly new around here, and I started to wonder if this whole thing wasn’t some sort of hazing ritual. It’s like the weather just wants to let me know who the boss is around here. One thing’s for sure, I have absolutely no fucking clue what the weather’s gonna do tomorrow.”