BusinessWest & Healthcare News: Business & Health Talk Podcast · Audacy

Joe Bednar talks with the man known online as Dave Hayes the Weather Nut

June 7, 2024·21 min·1 clip

The Springfield tornado pushed Dave Hayes back onto Facebook after he had deactivated his account.

Dave Hayes starts by clearing something up. The Weather Nut name, he tells Joe Bednar, means weather enthusiast, not trained meteorologist. Then he gets into the daily grind: weather data, paid subscriptions, free sources, National Weather Service discussions, and the job of turning all that into something useful for people around the region. His fascination goes back decades. Hayes remembers a Channel 5 broadcast with Bob Copeland showing severe thunderstorms on radar, then about five minutes later, the storm was overhead. The bright radar colors were no longer just graphics on a screen. They matched the thunder outside, and that made weather feel immediate, explainable, and worth chasing. Television became part of the education. Before remote controls, he sat near the set and flipped among Channels 4, 5, and 7 whenever forecasters came on. He wanted the why, not just the forecast. Hayes says he cared less about hearing what would happen and more about understanding the mechanics behind it. The online audience built slowly. Starting in the summer of 2011, he posted when active weather gave him something useful to say. Over roughly 18 or 20 months, that turned into the tens of thousands of followers the host mentions. By the end, the point is practical. Hayes is thinking about people in Charlemont and Stanford, Vermont, who may not get cell service at home. A planned private Facebook group is one way to reach residents who feel missed by bigger weather centers in Springfield or Albany.

As heard by us

A weather hobby becomes a local online voice through steady reporting.

Joe Bednar and Dave Hayes keep the focus on a familiar kind of local expertise: a weather fan who turned years of watching storms into a steady online presence. Hayes is clear about what he is and is not, which gives the conversation a practical edge.

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Why you'd press play

You get a grounded profile of how a weather enthusiast turns steady local reporting into a public following.

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