Take Eight

take eight with A.J. Burnett

WCVB’s A.J. Burnett has been forecasting the weather for 24 years, including 20 years on television in New England. A native Cape Codder, he now lives on the North Shore with his wife, Carrie and their two daughters, Grace, 9, and Caroline, 4. He shared with us his passion for weather, volunteerism, and a good old fashioned Hoodsie Cup.

When did you become interested in meteorology?

I was three years old – no joke! The legendary Don Kent made a huge impression on me as I watched him from my childhood home on Cape Cod. Fast forward a couple of years and the Weather Channel was on for hours and hours in my house. For my bar mitzvah, I got a HeathKit rain gauge that my dad and I built together. I was always tracking tropical storms and hurricanes on maps and logging weather obser vations. I went to school to study meteorology and have been living a childhood dream ever since!

Blizzards, thunderstorms, a calm sunny day… what’s your favorite kind of weather?

I rank them this way: thunderstorms, blizzards, hurricanes, and sunny summer days. But I will say that blizzards are great while I’m standing in them (I’ll always be out in the storm, covering it for the news, never in the studio -- and that’s the way I like it!), but when I get home, I shovel the snow out of my drive way, just like everyone else. That’s when I suddenly don’t like blizzards much. Oddly enough, I was petrified of thunderstorms as a kid. I’d crawl under my parent’s bed and stay there until morning. Of course, there came a time when I became too big to fit under the bed, so under the pil lows it was! I perfected the full body flip onto my belly while grabbing the pillows and smothering my head underneath and had that move down to 1.3 seconds!

If you weren’t a meteorologist, what job do you see yourself having?

Believe it or not, I taught high school for four months before my career move to WCVB. I could see myself teaching again (maybe not high school this time!). I would love to teach a broadcast meteorology course someday or work at a young scientist camp.

What’s it like to work a big storm? Are you there all night? Do you go without sleep for days?

Working a big storm is something I always look for ward to and I always suggest the station sends me to where I think the storm is going to be the worst. It’s a long day and usually means that I’m up at 1 a.m. for the morning news or awake until 1 a.m. if I’m working the evening news. It’s all about layers of waterproofing in the winter or changes of dry clothes in the warmer months. And it’s always about packing food, which my wife is awesome about handling for me most of the time. 5. What’s the best part about being a dad? The most challenging? I love watching my kids discover things. Maybe it’s that the stars never really go away during the day, or another way of multiplying numbers. Hearing them laugh in their own unique ways, whether it’s from being tickled or something funny happening. It reminds me that they are both very different and their own person. I constantly struggle with having enough patience.

6.

For several years you volunteered for Birthday Wishes, a nonprofit that pro vides birthday parties for kids experiencing homelessness. Why does this organization mean so much to you?

I love birthdays! For me, my birthday always meant spring was just around the corner (I was born in March), and my mother always made my birthday cakes when I was a kid. One year, it was a cake in the shape of an alligator, another was a soccer ball. And there were usually Hoodsies to go along with the cake. And I loved going to my friends’ birthday parties because it gave me a chance to hang out with them outside of school. When I was approached by a former high school classmate of mine, asking me to get involved with Birthday Wishes, I guess I didn’t truly appreciate the fact that there are kids who don’t get the same opportunity to celebrate their special day, and that moved me. I remain involved, emceeing the CakeWalk for the last three years and taking part in this year’s virtual walk. 7. You took your Facebook followers on some of those “virtual” walks this spring. What other activities kept your

family busy during quarantine?

We spent as much time outdoors as we could. We built a raised garden bed for vegetables and flowers, went through a few boxes of sidewalk chalk, got the kids new bikes (they’re growing like weeds!) and basically just took each day one at a time; each day presenting its own unique chal lenges.

8.

Do you have any special birthday tradi tions in your family?

When I was younger, my grandmother always wrote me a check in the amount of my age, but backwards. I got $91 when I turned 19. The tradi tion stopped for my 20th birthday, although as a joke when I was in college, I did write her a check for $8 on her 80th birthday. I have my own tradition that I’ve been doing every year for a long while. I bring about 4 boxes of Hoodsies into work on my birthday (or the closest workday to my actual birthday) and hand them out to everyone in the office. Who doesn’t love a Hoodsie? I love being able to spot people who did not grow up around New England when they ask, “What’s a Hoodsie?”