Craig Allen
Follow Craig Allen:
Follow Craig Allen:
Meteorologist Craig Allen is the most authoritative weather source in the New York tri-state area. Heading WCBS 880’s weather team, Allen’s reports are accurate and authoritative, his manner warm & friendly.
Craig earned his meteorology degree from the Earth & Space Sciences Department at Stony Brook University in May of 1979 and became chief meteorologist for WCBS 880 the following Spring.
At age 12, Craig Allen lugged a chalkboard to the kitchen table each night and pretended to be a TV weatherman, delivering a forecast to his family while they ate dinner. Today, audiences hear his radio reports on 880 every weekday morning from 5am to 10am; evenings from 4pm to 8pm.
It is the perfect occupation for someone who “loves to watch the forces of nature," so much so that he sometimes leaps into his car “to chase thunderstorms all over Long Island, especially down by the beaches.” What the audience doesn’t know is how frightened he was of thunderstorms as a child. When he was 11, his grandparents gave him some weather instruments and “the fear turned to fascination. Now, I try to share that fascination & enthusiasm with my radio audience.”
Craig prepares his own forecasts. He scans the tremendous (sometimes overwhelming) amount of atmospheric data and ponders all the possibilities before typing out a forecast which so many people will rely upon. “If there is severe weather, I’ll try not be overly grim but I’ll make sure to get the sense of urgency across to the listener! But remember, there are too many variables surrounding us in this bubble of an atmosphere we call home. The physics of the atmosphere follow certain laws and never breaks away from them. We do not know all those laws; neither do the computers! I don’t believe forecasting will ever be a perfected science…but I’ ll always try my best!”
