Sports reporter goes viral for grabbing camera over storm coverage

How many times have you watched a local report on bad weather – be it a hurricane or a blizzard – and felt sorry for the poor reporter who stood outside, bearing the brunt? Sportswriter Mark Woodley of Waterloo, Iowa, station KWWL-TV, embodied all those long-suffering reporters on Thursday when he was pressured into reporting on snow instead of athletics.

“That’s what you get when you ask the jock to come cover a blizzard on the morning show,” Woodley tweeted, along with a video of his work.

In the clip, Woodley notes that he’s been drafted in to cover the winter storm with all sporting events — his usual pace — canceled. He was called five hours earlier than he would normally wake up, he said, ‘to go and stand in the wind, snow and cold, and tell others not to do the same’ .

“I didn’t even realize it was also 3:30 a.m. until today,” he said.

Woodley was quite self-aware, urging viewers to “tune in for the next two hours to watch me get grumpier and grumpier”.

He also jealously pointed out that he was unable to drive the station’s Storm Chaser vehicle.

“This thing is heated,” Woodley said. “The exterior is currently unheated.”

Woodley could not immediately be reached for comment but told TODAY he had to get in and out of the heated station and was only out in the cold for six minutes at a time. And as an Iowan native, he’s no stranger to freezing temperatures. Still, he had to go live 14 times in three and a half hours, and the temperature in Waterloo was close to 40 below with the wind chill.

Yet his viral fame is now such that his own station wrote an article about his bad mood for its website.

“Of all the things I thought I was known for in my life,” he told TODAY, “the grumpy old weather reporter wasn’t on the list.”