![]() ![]() Homenuk constructed it in 2008, when he was a senior in high school, as a centralized home for his weather prognostics. New York Metro Weather was originally a Blogspot site. They'd say, 'This is good, this part doesn't make so much sense.' They didn't judge me." "I was 15 years old and I'm sure if I looked back on those forecasts now, I'd start crying. "They opened the door to me, and they weren't critical of me," said Homenuk. He posted those first tentative forecasts to message boards, and found a community willing to train him in the prophecy of atmospheric science. Homenuk submerged himself into the wild underbelly of amateur meteorology, and learned how to synthesize all of those arcane charts, precipitation percentages, wind speeds, and sky cover models into a weather projection. Like so many kids who've been introduced to a profound, inarticulable fear, the young Homenuk conquered his anxieties through the relentless pursuit of demystifying knowledge, in the same way that people who are afraid of flying enroll at a pilot academy. His mother scooped him out of bed, and the whole family huddled together in the basement waiting for the spell to break. ![]() A thunderstorm, big enough to be genuinely frightening, rocked his neighborhood one night when he was a child. Homenuk grew up in Mill Basin in Brooklyn, and can pinpoint the precise moment where he became a lifelong weather addict. We can still discuss it, and have opinions, and everyone is kind of cool with that," Homenuk told me. "Someone said to me recently that the weather is one of the few things that we haven't ruined yet. That, I think, is the primary reason Homenuk's brand of meteorology has caught on-he is bold enough to take a dictatorial stance on one of the most contentious topics in the city: whether 75 degrees and low humidity is better than 65 degrees and a mild breeze. It is both art and science, subjective and objective, hinging on a whole confluence of seasonal biases, transplant grievances, and how much you enjoy a pillowy, time-stopping blizzard or a slightly sticky spring-cusping-into-summer smolder. You could write a book on what constitutes an ideal, ten-outta-ten New York weather day. Homenuk gives it a three, noting that the "vibes are less terrible, but still not great." I am writing this story as the remnants of Hurricane Ian lay waste to our autumnal glory rain and wind have carved through Brooklyn for three straight afternoons. Instead, Homenuk sums up each day with a flat, decisive, single-digit score between one and 10. You do not need to know what a low-pressure system is, or what it does, to understand him. He is not a television weatherman-Homenuk does not present his findings through a lexicon of integers and aerographic formulas. It's become a ritual in my household.Įvery morning, around 7 a.m., Homenuk logs onto the New York Metro Weather Twitter account to analyze the day's forecast for the sun-worshipping residents of the five boroughs. In the same way the culture once deferred to a Roger Ebert four-star movie review, or the imprimatur of a Pitchfork Best New Music designation, when Homenuk says New York is in for a brilliant Friday afternoon, the city adjusts its itinerary accordingly. John Homenuk has earned something rare on the internet. ![]()
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