EITM: Andrew Freiden 7/17/24

The 12 On Your Side meteorologist is back...for the very first time.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
So many people, Elliott, listento you down here, it is crazy.
Well, first of all, Iknow the last name is Freed,
and I don't appreciate that. Thefirst of all, will you answer my
biggest concern, where the hell haveyou been? Listen? You know,
occasionally Superman has to fly close tothe sun to get some extra energy.

(00:21):
Sometimes your boy's got to take abreak. No, everything's fine. It
was just a long family vacation,the longest that I've taken since my honeymoon.
And now that our weather apartment isstaff we have five meteorologists on staff,
like we actually have the staffing tocover it. So it was I'm
really fortunate that I've been down hereat Channel twelve so long that I have

(00:41):
five and a half months of vacationevery year now, Andrew, I come
close to that, and Diane willtell you that I am good that I
take about two weeks a year,so the ability to go. Hey,
so where did you wait? Soyou were on? How long? Seriously,
how loud? You've been gone forlike a month and a half,
right, Well, I was nowtwo weeks and three days. I was

(01:06):
supposed to be at work today,but I had a little experience with some
airline issues. In fact, lastnight I was supposed to be in Richmond,
you know, in the evening,and I ended up last night at
Dulles Airport, where, by theway, I grew up about fifteen minutes
from it. With the choice towait until one oh five in the morning

(01:26):
to fly down to Richmond and getyour two twenty and get in bed at
maybe three point thirty, or personup and hop on an uber, and
I chose to take an uber fromDulles down to Richmond. Oh my god.
And it worked out because I wokeup. I woke up this morning
and I saw that the flight wascanceled, which I had a feeling they
were going to do. So Iwould still be sitting in Dulles somewhere if

(01:49):
I hadn't made that bold decision.Okay, Now I have two questions.
How much does it cost to takean uber from Dulles to Richmond. Take
a guess. I wouldn't even knowwhere to begin, Like, hold on,
hold on, hold on, holdon, hold on, hold on,
We're gonna guess, We're gonna guess. I'm gonna say three hundred.
No, it's more than that.It's more than that I'm gonna say.

(02:13):
I'm gonna say they charged. Didthey know who you were? Like?
Did you get a celebrity discount?Well, you don't have the Uber black
card on your phone. I'm gonnasay that Andrew paid six hundred and seventy
five dollars to get from Dalls toRichmond. Do you want the answer?

(02:35):
Yeah? Please. I turned onmy Uber and I tighted in my address
and I was flabber guested one hundredand fifty four dollars. Get out,
Shut the f up? Are youserious? I was flabber gausted. So
I now I'd already checked my bag. I was on the phone this morning
with United for about an hour tryingto figure out how amnuna get my bag,

(02:55):
which I guess I can get Fridaymorning at the Richmond Airport. But
long story short, I saw thatand I'm like, all right, I'm
high tailing it. So like gotout to the terminal, got to curb
three. C guy came and gotme, and off we went. You
know, I felt bad because Idon't think he's gonna get a fair back.
I did. I did give hima little extra cash for his issues.

(03:16):
You can forget that. That's that'sprobably true. I gave him.
I gave him some cash back.I gave him some cash because I felt
so bad because Tuesday night. Youknow, first of all, I thought
it was a bargain, right asyou you know, I was like one
hundred and sixty seven. In mymind, I'm thinking, like, what's
the next time I'm in Richmond insteadof like, instead of being angry on

(03:37):
ninety five, I'll pay one hundredand fifty bucks at sleep in the back
of a car. Yes, Iliterally was nodding in and out or dozing
off as he was navigating several differentconstruction zones that had us slowing down,
you know, getting into one lane. I felt, I mean, I
really felt bad for him. Butthe price, you know, and and
I don't think there are a lotof people at Tuesday at eleven forty five

(03:59):
at night from suburban and Reiko Countythat want to drive back up to DC
on an uper Yeah, right,So I was sure he was going back
with an empty car. I justfelt really bad for him. Now,
Andrew, let me let me askyou this though, that let me be
your boss at Channel twelve, right, let me be your boss for a
second. So I just gave youthree and a half month vacation that you
were gone for. You flew backin the night at eleven o'clock, the

(04:24):
night before you're supposed to start workingagain. Well, I was supposed to
get in Richmond at like seven,but my flight I was in Scotland,
and my flight from Scotland so London, was delayed for two hours. So
we got switched, you know,and I kind of did some pretty you
know. I give myself a goldstar for effort on like changing flights and

(04:46):
like getting actually home. But Ihad the plan. One of the things
I do at work is you know, run the schedule. Although Rachel's pretty
awesome with that as well, WeatherRachel. We call it There's News Rachel,
which I think you're familiar with Rachelto Pampa. But we have Weather
Rachel as well, right, whoyou should be familiar with because she's from
Chantilly, right anyway, So wework on the schedule together and we had
her on standby for this morning justin case, and so I let her

(05:10):
know. I said, hey,Rachel, I'm not it's not happening.
But the plan was to get backon you know, last night about seven
o'clock. No big deal and thenhop on the air this morning. Dude,
good for you. That's awesome.Hey, by the way, now
let me ask you some weather question. Well hold on, let me back
up one second. Let me backup one second. Where you said you
grew up right by Dulls' where's homehome? Listen, reston Virginia is where

(05:34):
I grew up proud, not SouthLake Seahawk, but a proud Herndon fighting
hornet. Oh you know what,good for you? Good for you?
And then how'd you end up at? How'd you end up? A Channel
twelve? So I went to Uva, got a job in Ronoka after I
graduated at a TV station. ThenI got a job at the TV station
in Richmond and loved it because it'sone of the few markets in town that

(05:58):
carries Ellie in the morning. SoI decided just stay here forever. That's
right, I mean, it's it'sreally it's on like when it talks about
why Richard's a great place to liveand all of the Metropolitan Business Journal magazines
and all that. You guys arenumber three. Oh all right, so
now let me ask you this.Let me ask you this, and you're

(06:19):
you're like a real meteorologis it's notlike a weather person, right, yeah,
correct, right, very good?Hey what well? Oh? Two
things. Number one, you knowwhat I learned yesterday? You know what
I learned in in meteoro logical stuff. I heard you were talking about wet
globe temperature. Do you know whata wet bulb is? Yes? I

(06:41):
do, uh, And it isa really fascinating place that I think summertimes,
lash heat weather reporting will go.I think over the next decade you're
gonna stop hearing the heat index asmuch and you'll start hearing the wet globe
temperature a global wet bolt, right. And that's what they were saying,
is that we're really not doing ourselvesas service by saying what the temperature,

(07:05):
what the feels like. Is thatwe really should be focused on the wet
I don't know why you're calling itwet globe. Maybe UVA teaches it wrong,
but the wet bulb that that thatis what we should be learning what
that means. And well, there'sthere's let's talk about this. There's three
different So there's three different it's technicallycalled the wet bulb globe temperature, but

(07:29):
let's talk about it. So first, when when I take the temperature,
like when you say that he thetemperaure is eighty two. That's a thermometer,
right, just a dry bulb thermometer. We call it just a thermometer
that you're used to. Then there'ssomething called a wet bulb thermometer. And
in that case, you take somefabric and you coat the thermometer with it.
And actually there's something called a slingsy chrometer, which is actually a
thing which is basically a stick witha with a like a little chain and

(07:53):
the therma and the thermometer that's soakedin water on the edge of it,
and you spin it around like you'rejust kind of like whipping it around real
fast. And what that does isthat allows the wetness of that piece of
cloth to evaporate, and it letsyou know how your body could, you
know how quickly you stuff evaporating,how humid is the air. So that's
the wet bulb part of it.Then there's another thing where they put like

(08:16):
a dark bulb on top of thethermometer, and that one measures how much
sun is on the input. Soyou combine all those things and it's it's
just better. Like you know whenyou stand out in the summer in the
sun and it's more miserable than theshade. Yes, the heat index doesn't
take that into account, but thisthing you're talking about does. Yeah,
no, and that we should getto that you could have a yeah,

(08:39):
but well, you could have afootball practice on a hot, humid day
if it was completely cloudy, andthe kids would be a lot better than
if it was completely sunny. Andthat's what this is trying to capture,
and that's what they were saying.But that number is so low, Like
if it was like one hundred andsomething yesterday, the wet bulb may be
like eighty eighty eight, and youwould go like, oh, it's eighty
eight. It's not that bad becausewe don't know what that means. So

(09:00):
you're gonna yes, it's probably thesmart way to go, but you're gonna
have to spend some time educating people, right. It took us about a
decade and a half to educate peopleto talk about the due point temperature versus
relative humidity. But I think peoplepretty much know now, Like if the
due point is seventy plus, it'sa miserably humid environment, and the relative
humidity can be twenty percent in themorning eighty percent in the afternoon, because

(09:22):
it's dependent on the temperature. Sowe just don't even talk about relative humidity.
We talk about due point, andpeople get that, Like a lot
of your listeners probably would know ifthe due point seventy plus, that's a
sweaty day. I can tell youI don't know. I don't know a
goddamn thing about the due point.If I'm being honest with you, I
can't tell you a thing about it. We need to get Tyler on board.

(09:43):
Tyler will teach you. Hey,So let me ask you this,
Andrew, when does all this crapbreak? Like I'm and listen, it's
summer, it's supposed to be hot, but it's bad. When does it
break? Yeah, Well, there'sgonna be a nice little break coming up,
you know, Thursday into the weekend. But it's not gonna be comfortable.
It's just to be sort of normalhot. And the thing about this
summer, which has been a littlebit freaky, is that we basically exploded

(10:07):
into drought conditions in June, andthat typically happens, you know, late
July, August, September. Soit just got really hot, really dry,
I mean there've been some storms hereand there, but yeah, the
overall pattern looks for it. Youknow, there's some hope for the beginning
of you know, there's a hopefrom the beginning of August that it'll be
a touch below average. But you'restill talking summer. I mean, summer
in the mid Atlantic is can bebrutal. And I don't know if I'll

(10:30):
get in trouble for this, butyou know it keeps getting more brutal as
you know, human cause global warmingis like slowly marching us to more of
these more humid and warm nights inparticular. Right, that's when it's miserable.
I gotcha, Hey, last thing, when you were in Scotland,
like, were you like like Isee you on TV and you got like
a fancy suit on or some whenyou were in Scotland? Do you get

(10:52):
like snot sling and drunk when you'reover there? Only one time and not
too much. I'm not a hugedrinker. Oh we but I did well,
you're overseas, sir, so youhave to be careful. But no,
I didn't do any I didn't doanything too bad. It was around

(11:13):
family and the kids and all thatstuff. So kept it in check.
But I was in a place inisland. You could look it up and
they pronounced it bada, but itlooks like barra b A r r A.
And this place is like you're inNarnia. There's sheep all over the
place. There's no trees. There'sthese beautiful Caribbean beaches. It's the most
beautiful beaches I've ever seen. Theonly problem is the water is like in

(11:35):
the low fifties, it's frigid cold. They're in the North Sea up there.
But it was beautiful. It waswe're visiting, reconnecting with some of
my wife's family. Her mom wasborn in Scotland. Oh yeah, no,
I was gonna say, Tyler justpulled up picture. I've never never
heard of it, but yeah,it's gorgeous. That's great. So that's
where you that's where you got allass hammered. Yeah, once or twice.

(11:56):
But that view was so much thatyou're just like, yeah, you
I mean, but it was nice. Like when I go on vacation,
I start to feel weird because Iwake up and people are like, hey,
are you tired, And I'm like, no, I just slept a
full night. Because as you getwhat time. You guys wake up crazy
early. I wake up early everyday, go into work and take a
nap. So when I go onvacation, I go, this is what
actual human beings feel like on aregular basis, getting a full uninterrupted nights

(12:20):
just might of sleep. Yeah,that's the best part for me. All
right, very good. Well Ithought you were going to be mad,
but you're not, so I'm happyabout that. No, it is an
honor. Listen when I get textfrom my boys, you know, really
it's talking about you. Tyler's talking. It's an honor. I grew up
on a morning zoo radio up innorthern Virginia, just like my first love
when it came to media, andso it's really cool to be on with
you guys. You guys are apowerhouse, and I feel fortunate to be

(12:43):
sharing the earways with you. Well, Andrew, I appreciate. I'm going
to keep your number on holding caseI need you for anything. Yeah,
if you have in trouble falling asleep, I can explain other you know,
small time weather instruments that you've neverheard of. It put your right to
bed perfect, I'll take you upon it. Andrew. I appreciate it.
Thank you, my friend, Thankyou, sir, you got it.
Talk to you, Larre. Howabout that? How about that we're

(13:03):
friends with Andrew. Don't tell him, Macie, but the no. But
that's awesome, that's awesome. Doyou think they heard him in the control
room and the staff that is atwork today was like, oh, yeah,
it sounds like he was available.