The resulting custody battle lasted two years, one of which Berk spent in and out of foster care. It was not fun,” he says, though he declines to elaborate. His parents split up when he was 3, and it got ugly. What’s the source of this almost maniacal drive? “I survived a lot,” he says.īerk was born in the Bronx in 1973. But rather than sit back and enjoy the breeze, he insisted on riding a stationary bike on the boat during the crossing. Because pedestrians and cyclists are not allowed on the Bay Bridge, he took a boat to the Eastern Shore. He averaged dozens of miles per day and developed excruciating blisters. Last August, Berk spent a week trekking 321 miles from Wisp to Ocean City to raise money for Cool Kids, a trip he plans to repeat this summer. This includes visiting schools most weeks to teach lessons about weather and raise money, and hiking and biking across Maryland. If he sets a goal or says he’s going to do something, you can count on it being accomplished.” “ means interviewing hundreds of American Girl hopefuls on a Saturday on his own time. “He pretty much agrees to anything we throw at him,” says Sharon Perfetti, the executive director and co-founder of Cool Kids Campaign. When the issue of climate change is raised, Berk begs off, saying he’s trying to avoid the issue these days because it’s “too polarizing.” (Contrary to the vast majority of climate scientists, he believes that global warming is due solely to the Earth’s natural temperature fluctuations.) And when Cool Kids Campaign, a Towson-based charity for pediatric cancer patients and their families, needed an emcee for one of its American Girl model search events this month, guess who agreed to host? When an elderly man needs a chair at the packed Panera, Berk grabs one for him. The irony is that Berk comes across like an inveterate people-pleaser. Somehow, this self-described “weather nut” has touched a nerve, becoming one of Baltimore’s most divisive media figures. And though he has won several “Best of” awards from local media (including Baltimore in 2000, 2006, and 2007), he has also taken plenty of hits for his denial of man-made climate change and his thin-skinned reactions to criticism. A parody Twitter account ( regularly mocks his forecasting skills, his catch phrases (“Faith in the Flakes,” “stickage,” et al.), and his general persona. But since heading online-only in 2012, his following has, well, snowballed, and he now reaches about 1 million people a week on Facebook alone, and up to 5 million during storms.īut he has accumulated a small, vocal contingent of detractors, as well. Almost certainly, a portion of his audience followed him over from his Baltimore TV gigs, first at WBAL from 1997 to 2003 and then at WMAR from 2003 to 2012. With more than 200,000 followers on Facebook, nearly 30,000 on Twitter, and as many as hundreds of thousands of daily visitors to his website,, Berk’s populist touch can’t be denied. “Now how do you that without putting people to sleep?” he asks, his eyes alight with all the delight of a kid on a snow day. “This is where it’s going to start as rain and go to heavy snow, probably a couple inches of accumulation, then to rain, then into snow tomorrow,” he says, pointing to the pink smear on the map engulfing the greater Baltimore region. Look,” he continues, turning his computer to reveal a radar map. I hate to be rude,” he says in his rapid-fire patois that still retains a hint of his native “New Yawk” accent. Suddenly, snow that was scheduled for the following day might arrive as early as this afternoon, and Berk, the meteorologist of choice for many Baltimoreans, is worried about missing a chance to update his legion of social media followers on the latest projections. A storm system is headed for Maryland and is moving in faster than anticipated. His preoccupation, as always, is the weather. Though he’s being interviewed in the back of a Timonium Panera Bread, he keeps stealing glances at his MacBook Pro and his iPhone, which lies on the table buzzing and ringing frequently.
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