We all know him from the morning announcements. He is the man, the myth, the legend: Shane Martrich, better known as Hurricane Shane.
The infamous weatherman’s love for the subject came from his father, a meteorologist for Eastern PA Weather Authority, and plans on following closely in his footsteps. Now, Martrich hopes on expanding Emmaus’ knowledge of the weather in practice for his dream job and out of his pure love for it.
Stinger: When did your love for weather begin?
Martrich: It was kind of like something I always grew up with. I remember when I was really little, my dad didn’t have his company and we would watch the weather and watch the storms roll in and he was going to school for weather… I kind of fell more and more in love with it as time grew on.
Stinger: How did you come to be a weatherman for school news?
Martrich: I was really tired of watching the weather in 7th grade and hearing it wrong. So I went to get it changed, I went to Mr. Braglio like ‘It’s this, this and this’ [and] he just looked at [what I had] and I said thank you and he just was like, ‘You’re going on tomorrow.’
Stinger: How did you come up with your name?
Martrich: September 5th, 2016 was when it started. We were doing mock shows to have our on-air personalities on point so you could be in your head and go with the flow. I messed up on something and I looked on the screen and it said “Shane the weather man” and I thought ‘That’s a terrible name; I can’t have that when I go on.’ So we had to start brainstorming and somebody asked about hurricane season and said that would be funny if we named him Hurricane Shane. Nobody said anything about it and then the next day when I went on air it said “Hurricane Shane.”
Stinger: Do you plan on carrying out a career that involves the weather?
Martrich: I have mixed emotions right now. More than likely yes right now, but it depends on how I progress in other aspects as well. I’m taking Physics and Alg 3/Trigonometry next year so I’ll be taking Calculus by senior year. As long as physics goes well, then I most likely will be going into weather… I’m just on that path with something that I can relate to with my dad, so more than likely I’ll go into it as a career.
Stinger: What aspect in meteorology do you find to be the most difficult?
Martrich: Well there’s some annoying aspects, and there’s some actually difficult things. The annoying aspects are when none of the models have a clue, because usually three to five days out before a storm comes the models start to converge on one central idea. In those days prior to the storm, they can change, but there’s not usually a drastic change. The thing that’s most annoying, especially for one snowfall this year, is how we were not even the day before and all the models were scattered. Not one of them was matching up at all, it was really annoying trying to pick and choose which model we thought would be correct, because it all started out with the same data, just interpreted a different way. Something else I really hate is not trying to predict the weather, but when you’re outside and you know it’s coming, and it’s not there.
