Comments (0) BEST (NON-TV) WEATHERPERSON - 2008
Jimmy "Dutch" Gaines
Minnesotans pride themselves on their tolerance for brutal, soul-crushingly cold weather. But the truth of the matter—as anyone who's ever listened to the alarmist hokum dished out by WCCO (AM 830) and every TV newscast in town—is we're a bunch of pansies. Minnesotans spend an obscene amount of time wringing their hands over the minutiae of the five-day forecast. They also transform their beloved Doppler-radar-wielding correspondents, imbued with no greater intellectual skill than the ability to read a teleprompter, into folk heroes. That's the genius of Dude Weather, Jimmy "Dutch" Gaines's hilarious skewering of the cult of the "meteorologist." On a daily basis he proves that a chain-smoking former pizza delivery man, operating out of a dingy basement apartment in south Minneapolis, can just as effectively deliver an accurate weather forecast as the bimbos and mimbos paid lavishly by the television networks. Of course it also helps that Gaines is one wickedly funny dude. Whether professing his unrequited love for KDWB (FM 101.3) Nordic weather diva Lena Svenson on Valentine's Day or hounding his mother about the temperatures in International Falls, Gaines delivers the most entertaining and useful forecast in the Twin Cities.
