This episode features the iron man of Arizona weather forecasting, Michael Groff. He produces a highly detailed daily weather forecast on YouTube, the Phoenix, Arizona Weather Discussion. Get a behind-the-scenes look at how Michael puts these forecasts together and learn about his other online media ventures.
Transcript
INTRO: From Tucson, Arizona, welcome to the Water Harvesting 101 podcast. My name is Martha Retallick. I’ve been a water harvester for 20 years, and I’m looking forward to helping you get started.
Before we do that, here’s a little Tucson secret: For most of the year, we’re in drought. That’s just how life is in the desert.
But when the rains return, oh, do they ever. They often bring an unwelcome friend called flooding.
How do we reduce the risks of flooding? We do it with water harvesting.
Water harvesting encompasses three activities:
- Redirecting rainwater away from where it isn’t wanted to where it is.
- Storing rainwater for later use, for example, during a drought.
- Recycling “used” water. At my place, I don’t let laundry water go down the drain. Instead, it’s for the fruit trees.
We’ll be covering all of these topics and more, so let’s get started.
EPISODE: On this week’s episode, we are going to meet the Iron Man of Arizona weather forecasting. His name is Michael Groff, he’s on YouTube, and he does not miss a day of weather forecasting.
And wait ‘till you hear him. Get ready to meet the voice of Arizona weather.
Martha: Michael, welcome to the podcast. How did you get into weather?
Michael: I think, like a lot of weather geeks that are out there, even from the time I was really, really small, three, four five years old, I was always looking up at the sky or watching the rain or lightning.
I was born in Northwest Minnesota, but I kind of spent the first four or four and half years of my life in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
There’s a lot of different kinds of weather there, from 30 and 40 below zero, to snow, to severe weather, to heat waves, droughts, all of that.
And then, moving out here, the weather was fascinating too, for a different reason because you had the big monsoon storms, and then it would be hot, and it’d be dry, and then just random dust storms and rain. I just I was in love with all that.
Those were the golden years of The Weather Channel and when weather forecasting was becoming more of a thing and really taking off. So I would write down observations. I’d keep logs and details from back when I was, I don’t know, six, seven years old and make recordings and record weather events on videotapes.
That was when I wanted to be in broadcasting, either, I don’t know, doing a morning show, or doing some wacky stuff on radio, or doing the weather, or both. So those were my aspirations.
And then, finally, I started to be able to do some of that when I was 15, I actually worked with the National Weather Service, did NOAA Weather Radio, among other things.
So, it just kind of kept blossoming from there. I went into the independent kind of broadcasting, voiceovers, and all that. I’ve been doing the weather ever since – in one form or another.
Martha: Here’s something to keep in mind about Michael’s forecasts on YouTube. In addition to the fact that they are daily forecasts, they are highly detailed. Michael, you go into a great deal of depth on various weather models, how they’re put together, how they agree, and how they disagree. Tell us a bit more about that.
Michael: Well, since I’m a weather geek, I wanted to make a video for other people – my videos are for anybody that wants to watch them. And we have simplified summary versions, too.
But, for the real nerds, the geeks that really like to look at the under the hood, where you want to find out not just what’s happening like the TV meteorologists will tell you, but you want to know why, the mechanics of putting together a forecast, and what are the challenges.
You know this is this is a science and you know there’s two kinds of meteorologists – those who are humble and those who are about to be.
The science is just so wide open. There’s still so much to learn. Anybody that is in this field should always be learning and willing to learn. That’s what’s so great about it.
That’s why I like to do these kinds of weather discussions where we take a look at, yeah, the surface level, we talk about that too, the basics, and then we dive in and get into the nuts and bolts of the models, and crunch those numbers, and look at those ensemble data, the means and the extremes, and talk about it. And we try to do it in a way that, people can understand without talking down to them.
The core of the mission here is going for the weather geek of community without doing a three-hour video every day, because we certainly could do that.
We’ve been doing these weather weather discussions for nine and a half years. And we keep going, getting stronger with them. So, it’s been doing very well.
Martha: Even though your forecasts are about Phoenix and Arizona, you have an audience that’s around the world.
Michael: Well, Martha, I think part of the thing is, is that we do talk now and then on my channel, and I’ll put out other other weather events that are occurring.
We’ve done some hurricane discussions for some big storms that have hit Texas and Florida. But I think people just have a passion for the weather, and they like to see some of these events.
In Arizona, some of our weather events make national, even international headlines. Our big dust storms are walls of dust that go several thousand feet, sometimes 10,000 feet in the atmosphere.
They swamp the entire southern part of the state or southwest Arizona. They roll into California, you know, these monstrous dust storms, and people are fascinated by that.
Then there’s the hail and the strong winds, the 80, 90 mile an hour winds we can have, and then our extreme heat. And, sometimes, our big snowstorms up north.
It’s all stuff that people are fascinated by in Arizona. What other state? I mean, there’s a few, I suppose, but Arizona is a very diverse state, climatologically speaking.
It’s not just always sunny and hot here with, you know, highs of a hundred degrees. There’s a lot to talk about. And I think that’s what people like to see.
Martha: Another thing that’s really cool about your channel is it features real people. It isn’t artificially produced. Why don’t you talk a little bit about that?
Michael: So, obviously in this space and on YouTube in general, it’s not just in the weather space, it’s news, it’s true crime, it’s law tube, it’s whatever.
There’s a lot of AI slop out there. Last year, we had tremendous flooding in Gila County, especially around the Globe area. And it made big headlines.
And, of course, there were a lot of these AI slop channels that showed some flooding, some of it was from Globe, and some of it was from Globe 10 years ago.
They used other footage and they have that AI voice that reads it out. Some of those videos get tens or hundreds of thousands of views, but it’s not all accurate information.
There’s a lot of misinformation that’s put in there as well, just to sensationalize it. And you know that’s one thing that I like to do on this channel is, is there’s a human element to it.
For better or worse, some people are asking, why is your ugly mug on the screen? But I think that people like to know that there’s a human behind it that is going to talk to you, talk to you like a human would talk to you.
And, hey, look, if we get something wrong, or if we screw up, and we’re going to screw up, that’s part of the human experience also. And I’m certainly willing to take accountability for that.
But there’s a lot of AI slop and there’s a lot of engagement farming too. Even here in Arizona, we have bad actors who do that.
So, we like to give a fairly straightforward, rational, objective view of things.
Now, there are times where the weather is sensational, there are times where the weather is extreme, and it is serious and it is dangerous, and we want to emphasize when that happens. But it’s certainly not every day.
Martha: You also have quite the online media empire, you and your family. Tell us a little bit about that.
Michael: I’ve been doing an Internet music streaming station that’s been going since the year 2000. It’s called KMGX – you can find it at KMGX.com. Just go there and a little player pops up.
Then the one and only Michelle has her own channel that her youngest daughter Adriana has sort of commandeered for her own little shorts and funny things that 11-year-olds will post. Michelle has her own videos where she went to the Philippines, and she posts some stuff over there.
I also appear on Dan’s channel. Dan is a good friend of mine over there on The Courtroom Files YouTube channel. I guest host his live shows sometimes, and then we have our show, In the Blind with Mike and Dan.
For many, many years, I hosted a talk show and a podcast. We talked news and politics and sports and also just a variety of different topics. And we always tried to keep some funny stuff in there too.
So, I’ve been behind a lot of microphones over the years and worn a lot of different hats.
Martha: Well, that was a wonderful time with Michael Groff.
I’d like to leave you with this little piece of advice: If you are listening to daily forecasts like Michael’s, they are there to provide you with information you can put to work right away.
Take for example, this week in Arizona, we are predicted to have a heat wave, as in, the temperatures are expected to reach 90 degrees or above.
In my garden, that means it is time to harvest the the lettuces, and the greens like mustard greens and kale because they wilt in the heat. Sometimes they don’t come back and I’d rather have those vegetables to eat.
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OUTRO: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Water Harvesting 101 podcast. If you’d like to learn more about water harvesting, meet my book family.
First, it’s City Nature, the book that’s guaranteed to look great on any coffee table. City Nature reveals my secrets to water harvesting through my 20-year journey of transforming my Tucson home into an urban oasis. Get the details at CityNatureBook.com.
And if you’re on the go, take water harvesting with you. Water Harvesting 101 is an audiobook and eBook combination that will teach you the nuts and bolts of water harvesting and show you how to put them to work. Available exclusively at WaterHarvesting101Book.com.