![]() ![]() It hit in the form of an anonymous letter prompting the management of WCBS-AM to investigate his academic credentials. He was 40 years old and happy, living his childhood dream. He filled it with state-of-the-art equipment and began broadcasting from his home, which he shared with his wife and a pair of German shepherds. So did then-Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn.ĬBS engineers helped Harris design his own weather center, 150 feet from a five-bedroom house on a piece of land overlooking a mountain lake, atop one of the Ramapo Mountains in northern New Jersey. The Long Island Rail Road hired him the same year. Six months later, the New York Times hired him as its first consulting meteorologist. Bob.”įrom there, he landed an on-air job at WCBS-AM, the network’s all-news radio station. ![]() He spent seven years on its airwaves, where he became well known as “Dr. In 1970, he moved to radio station WOR as staff meteorologist and science editor. After a two-month tryout, he was hired as an off-camera forecaster for WCBS.įor the next decade, his career flourished. In 1969, unable to forget it any longer, Harris called up the New York affiliate of CBS-TV and introduced himself as Dr. Starting out, if you didn’t have a degree, if you didn’t have any broadcast experience in the largest market in the United States, forget it.” “I knew there was not a snowball’s chance in hell. He spent his early 20s repairing cameras, teaching lifesaving and playing piano in New York jazz clubs. He studied math, physics and geology at three colleges, but left school without a degree. He dreamed of Bermuda highs and February blizzards, of funnel clouds touching down on distant prairies and thunderstorms rumbling out to sea. He was thrilled and frightened by thunder and lightning. Harris, the son of a jeweler, worshiped Tex Antoine, a New York forecaster who drew mufflers and earmuffs on a cartoon character named Uncle Weatherbee on the evening news.Īs a boy, Harris would intercept old maps and satellite pictures destined for National Weather Service trash cans and scrounge textbooks from the library near his home in the Bronx. Other kids worshiped Chuck Berry and Elvis. It is a game not only of miles but of chance.īob Harris’ obsession began in childhood. Harris is one of the predictors, the hundreds of forecasters who earn their living poring over the limited fine mesh, the primitive equation models and the jet stream analyses looking for clues to what tomorrow will bring. Six years ago, the call went against Harris, whose professional reputation was tarnished by a controversy of his own making. The people who follow the game of inches awaited the call from the man who follows the game of miles: cold and cloudy, with a few scattered flurries, but no measurable snowfall.
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