James Spann is a legendary television meteorologist here in Alabama. Spann works as the Chief Meteorologist at the ABC affiliate in Birmingham for those new to the Tennessee Valley. He is known for his slogan “Respect the polygon,” taking off his coat during long-form on-air coverage of severe weather events and showcasing his heavy-duty suspenders.

Spann has a lot of side ventures outside of his typical workday, including visiting elementary schools across the state of Alabama and teaching students about the weather, and being on the board of one of the biggest hospitals in Birmingham. He also does radio voiceovers for stations across the United States.

I recently listened to a podcast of Spann’s weather podcast called Weatherbrains, which is broadcast live on YouTube Monday nights and uploaded to podcast systems on Tuesdays. His show features several panelists from across the county who have a connection to the weather, and they interview guests that are into meteorology, emergency management, or earth sciences.

Recently, Weatherbrains featured a senior at Oklahoma University named Mikayla Smith, studying to be a broadcast meteorologist and producing the student-run nightly broadcast for the local cable system. Smith has a passion for helping those in the deaf and hard of hearing community. She is fluent in sign language and incorporates sign language into her weather segments. Like a lot of disability ventures, Smith has received a lot of praise for her works and criticism (which is to be expected when in the public eye). A topic brought up in conversation during the interview I never realized was that the translation of weather broadcasts uploaded to social media sites like Facebook is often lost among the deaf community as there is often no way of adding a closed caption to the broadcast.

To hear Mikayla’s venture into helping the deaf and hard of hearing in her community, click here. If you don’t want to listen to the whole episode, there is a time stamp on the page that once can fast forward to start listening to her story.