One thing I forgot to mention in yesterday's winter weather fail post is there appears to be a drift / dry slot developing between Lord Gary England and his former apprentice turned usurper David Payne.
For those who have been reading this site for a while, this shouldn't come as a surprise. We first speculated there were cracks in the Gary England / David Payne relationship back in 2014 when Gary didn't recognize David during his final broadcast.
Usually for things like this they trot out the successor, shake hands, pass the torch and all that good stuff. Not only was that pomp and circumstance routine missing from the broadcast, but David Payne’s name wasn’t mentioned once. Should we read anything into that? Probably not, but since I love controversy, I will.
I'm glad I like controversy, because it looks like I was right!
On Saturday, when it became obvious that the doom and gloom ice storm forecast for the metro totally missed its mark, one of Gary England's followers asked the Severe Weather Savior for his thoughts about the media overhype. This was his reply...
I have no clue what "a dim view of such activity" followed by the "cool" emoji even means, but who cares, it's Gary England. Did it make sense that people sent him photos of pigs to air during his broadcasts? No, but we still liked it.
This prompted one of Gary's other followers to ask a more direct question about David Payne...
Here is Gary's reply:
Wow! Someone hops on Twitter and attacks your successor, and you agree with them? That's brutal! Remind David Payne not to list Gary England as a reference when he applies for some chief meteorologist gig in Dallas.
Seriously, I wonder what happened? I guess the most logical answer is that Gary England is just like the rest of us and fed up with the winter weather hype created by a profit-driven, ratings-starved media. Then again, Gary England isn't what we call human. He was born from within the high-pressure velocity of a virgin wall cloud during the great Miracle Tornado of '39. He can bend wind, hail and space-time. If he wanted to avoid the hype, he could simply fly off to his "Fortress of Solitude" in Meeker and let the storm (and hype) pass him by.
That's why I think there's something else going on here. As we all know, David Payne was kind of forced on his weather holiness. Gary wanted to tab the calm and collected Michael Armstrong as his successor, but KWTV went with the screamin', stormchasin', ratings gettin' buckshot instead. Maybe Gary still holds resentment over that, or maybe David Payne called Loretta a slut. We really don't know.
Either way, these two need to come together and work out their differences. We don't want a Obi Wan and Anakin situation developing here. Actually, I think we do! David Payne should challenge Gary to a weather duel inside Channel 9's new and improved doppler radar. My money would be on Gary. He may be old, but the weather force is still strong with him. He'd turn David into "Darth Payne" before you could say "slick and hazardous."
