John Bolaris coming back to Fox 29 in Philly to be chief met

[PhillyWX]

http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_up ... Fox29.html

Philadelphia TV exile John Bolaris is coming back, and he is expected to be announced shortly as the weathercaster on Fox29's 5 and 10 p.m. newcasts, according to a source close to negotiations.

He is said to be starting in January.

NBC10 also was offered the services of Bolaris, now weekend weathercaster on WCBS in New York. NBC10 chose not to top Fox29's offer, the source said. An NBC10 spokeswoman said she could not comment because it was a personnel issue.

A Fox spokeswoman said she had no announcement. The fate of Fox29's weather lineup, including lead meteorologist Rob Guarino, was not known.

Bolaris did not return a call for comment. His agent Richard Leibner was out of the country.

Bolaris, a popular guy in his 12 years at NBC10, left Philadelphia in 2002 for his native New York.

Bolaris had made no secret of his desire to return to Philadelphia, and the rumor mill of his joining Fox29 has been grinding since summer.

He recently took up part-time residence in Center City, and has been spotted in Washington Square and at the Wachovia Center.

[Category 5]

Oh for the love of god no.

We still haven't forgotten his Storm of the Century, maybe he's coming back to tell us when it's coming.

But seriously, he's no met IMO.

Makes me wonder why he left NYC.

But if they replace Rob with him, I'll never watch Fox 29 news again, I swear.

[Category 5]

Oh for those who don't know the story.

Remember that big New England Blizzard on March 4-6 2001? Well John Bolaris was working on our local NBC station in Philly. I admit, it looked like it was gonna be big. Well, he starts screaming "STORM OF THE CENTURY" "WORSE THEN 1996" "GET OUT AND STOCK UP, 25-30 INCHES". He was screaming louder then all of our local stations + TWC combined, who all had more sane predictions.

3 days, 1 inch of snow, 3 inches of sleet, and an inch of rain later, he's screaming that it's not his fault (we know, you just caused a panic throughout the delaware valley over 1 or 2 model runs, thats millions of people BTW). Granted it wasn't but come on, you don't compare ANYTHING with 1996 unless it's about certain. And he'd had a history of hyping things so it really ticked alot of people off.

Ticked them off so much that we ran him out of town like a bad draft pick. He recieved death threats, hate mail, people threatened to sue him, and even someone walked up to him and peed on his leg. A year later, he packed his bags for NYC.

[PhillyWX]

Oh for the love of god no.

We still haven't forgotten his Storm of the Century, maybe he's coming back to tell us when it's coming.

But seriously, he's no met IMO.

Makes me wonder why he left NYC.

But if they replace Rob with him, I'll never watch Fox 29 news again, I swear.

Sounds like a lot of feedback I've been getting. I got about 20 emails yesterday on my phillyweather.net account about this and 19 of them are strongly negative against Fox and one was neutral about the talk.

Bolaris is more known for his drunken escapades at the Jersey Shore, his love life (or lack thereof), and 3/5/01, than he is for being a reputable forecaster.

I think and kinda hope Rob ends up going over to 10. Rob's cold leanings would balance out the warm leaning that Hurricane has in his forecasts.

[PhillyWX]

Ticked them off so much that we ran him out of town like a bad draft pick. He recieved death threats, hate mail, people threatened to sue him, and even someone walked up to him and peed on his leg. A year later, he packed his bags for NYC.

He got into a fight at the Shore too.

I also remember him doing a weather forecast from the Shore one night drunk as a skunk.

[Stephanie]

Yeah, I like Rob too.

It makes you wonder why Fox is going after Bolaris - ratings?

I know, replace Dawn Stensland with Joyce, that would be a start.