Faces of Southeast Missouri: Grant Dade

Some of meteorologist Grant Dade’s earliest memories are of weather. One impactful instance stands out to him, in particular: During tornado warnings, he and his family watched supercell thunderstorms 20 miles in the distance move across the plains on the front porch of their home in Rapid City, S.D.

Then, in the mid-1970s, his family moved to Omaha, Neb., another place Dade says experienced a lot of severe weather. At this time, he says he was “petrified” of storms, but interested: He often went to the library to check out books on weather. At 10 years old, he says it was “like a switch flipped,” and he “couldn’t wait for a storm;” he would go outside and climb up a ladder onto the roof to see storms better.

“That’s how I got my love for weather, so I’ve always had it,” Dade says.

After high school, however, he went to college at Auburn University to study construction management because he wanted to make at least $25,000 annually after he graduated; at the time, he says the National Weather Service was only paying recent graduates $16,000 annually. He says he was “miserable” and began managing restaurants, which he did for nearly 15 years.

When he was 33 years old, he realized it was now or never: He needed to go back to school to study weather. With the support of his wife, he enrolled at Mississippi State University for the broadcast meteorology program.

During this program, he landed an internship in Huntsville, Ala., doing severe weather coverage, which provided him with the experience, film footage and connections he needed. He took a position in 2006 doing the morning weather shift in Oak Hill, W.V., where he worked for nine months making $8.30 an hour for his family of four. He says it was a “rough” period in which he almost gave up his dream.

And then a station in Tyler, Texas, called and offered him a job, which he took and worked at for nearly seven years, until the position at KFVS12 in Cape Girardeau opened up. Dade has now worked and lived in Cape Girardeau for nine years, the longest he has lived anywhere.

He says he enjoys working in the middle of the country because the weather offers “a little bit of everything.”

“My biggest passion about weather is severe weather. Tornadoes, in particular,” Dade says. “I am the guy that you look to, to help you, maybe save your life.”

Dade says throughout the years, he has worked to develop speaking about weather in layman’s terms while on the air so viewers can better understand what is happening and how the weather will affect them. Teaching viewers in this way also helps him learn more about weather.

Dade says weather is like a puzzle; his job is to look at the local and national computer models and piece the forecast together. He says the best way to deal with being wrong about a prediction is “not to be wrong.”

In addition to studying the weather, Dade enjoys photographing weather, fly fishing and trading stocks. As he does when reporting the weather, he speaks with passion about these topics to help others learn more about them.

“I just like to share my interests,” he says. “And I try to share it in terms that people can understand.”