How gay is your weather?

It started with a cockroach. When meteorologist Justin Mosely saw God's most resilient creature on the set while predicting rain in the Sunshine State in the fall of 2006, he lost it. He. Lost. It. In a... gay way. "OH MY GOD! THERE IT IS!" Mosely screamed in the voice of a sun-damaged housewife twice his age to an off-camera anchorman named Bill. A reluctant star was born.

Mosely, who has repeatedly denied requests for an interview, is not proud of his star-making moment. The station manager of SNN News 6 told a Florida paper, "He wants to get past this. It's not who he is." Of course it's not. As Mosley's station bio makes clear, he's not the kind of guy who screams at bugs, he's the kind of guy who "enjoys tennis and swimming." The station manager also insists that the footage never aired and that the three-hour delay is a fabrication. "The bug didn't go and come back."

But Mosely's reaction brought an important sociocultural-meteorological issue to the fore. Just three days before the cockroach video was posted, openly handsome Sam Champion took control of the laser pointer on Good Morning America. A gay invasion on the world of weather had begun. But are gay weathermen really spreading across the country as fast as a February cold front? Or does it just seem kind of fruity to fiddle with one's Doppler?

"It would be nice" if the gay mafia ruled meteorology, says Dan Woog, a nationally syndicated gay newspaper columnist. "Plenty of weathermen are pretty cute." In his books Jocks and Gay Men, Straight Jobs, Woog talked to gays in nontraditional fields like professional sports, truck driving, and even TV anchoring! Though he's not ready to lump meteorology in with the "gay jobs"—interior decorator, florist, priest—just yet, Woog does think it's getting easier for gays to show up onscreen.

"I don't think there's a gay gene for meteorology," he says, "but maybe being able to point to a map that doesn't exist behind you brings out the showman in people." Now, as spring has sprung and our thoughts turn to warm weather and fey meteorology, Radar presents a showcase of delightfully effervescent weathermen

MIKE BETTES
Mike Bettes, prime-time anchor of Abrams & Bettes: Beyond the Forecast on the Weather Channel, is an Emmy-winning meteorologist with severe weather experience. He's also a 34-year-old bachelor who likes to "surf the Internet, watch college football, and work out" in his spare time. Uh-huh. But even though he says being a TV weatherman is not "all glitz and glamour," Bettes sure did love being crowned a queen by Miss America on a Fourth of July telecast. "It's always been a dream of mine to wear the crown, and now today I can. I am the happiest meteorologist on the face of the earth!" said Bettes.