Today we’d like to introduce you to Bo Cole.

Hi Bo, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself
I was always interested in weather since I was a young boy, looking out the window at storms and drawing pictures of storms–basically obsessing about the weather all the time. Growing up, I always wanted to pursue it from a schooling standpoint, but I was fairly horrible at math, and so I decided to take a different route to get my degree in Marketing, along with some other design-based studies. It wasn’t until about 2011 or so when I was done with schooling for some time, that I had bumped into an old friend while buying a frisbee for my dog. We weren’t particularly close on a regular basis, but we knew each other from high school. She said hello and asked if I am a ‘famous Meteorologist’ yet, and I said: “no, I’m not”! and her response was simply something along the lines of ‘why the hell not?’ At the time, I had no good answer for her. This conversation and a few others with other distant friends and also some family members are what ultimately paved the way for me to go back to school in 2012 for Meteorology. It started with a social media channel that I called BoKnowsWeather, on Twitter and Facebook. Back then, Instagram was hardly a thing, or maybe just becoming a thing. Everyone always used to say to me, “Bo Knows!” with just about everything, so it seemed like a clever line, although that line started with Bo Jackson. I then had a logo made, and formed the channel online in 2012, and it has grown steadily since, on all platforms. I have since had content and videos featured on all major platforms, news channels (ABC, The Weather Channel, Weather Nation, Accuweather, The Weather Network and others)– and I have been featured on KFAN radio with Dan Barreiro, and also interned with Paul Douglas and his team when he ran WeatherNation locally here. I now also do consulting for businesses that rely on accurate weather information.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
In school- math was a struggle for me, even when I decided to go back to school much later in life. I did have a more solid understanding of it at a later age which helped me to overcome that hurdle. If I had gone at a younger age, I think that would have been more of a challenge for me.

From a professional standpoint, it’s sometimes challenging to decide where to put most of my focus, whether it is on social media or the business side of things. There are limits to each, especially when you are the sole person with the knowledge. It becomes difficult to scale these avenues based on the variables of science. Putting up with the negativity that surrounds the realm can be challenging sometimes- when a forecast doesn’t verify.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I do social media weather, with a no-hype approach, and have built the social media channels up to have over 30k followers amongst all channels in the last 10 years. People rely on me, and they often reference my forecasts, sometimes even from a professional level. Social media is how I was ultimately found and ended up on the radio, which then led to people reaching out to me to ask if I can help them with their businesses. Based on that, I also offer to consult with people that rely on time-sensitive weather information for their businesses, which helps them make strategic business decisions that involve positioning their labor forces around the weather.

Have you learned any interesting or important lessons due to the Covid-19 Crisis?
It has not impacted my realm too greatly, as the weather is always happening, but I do find that people are home a lot more to observe the weather and interact. I also found initially that it did influence some people’s budgets due to all of the unknowns surrounding the pandemic.

Contact Info:

• Email: bo@boknowsweather.com
• Website: www.boknowsweather.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/boknowsweather/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/boknowswx
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/boknowsweather