Kody Wilson is thankful for a lot of things, but his autism may be at the top of the list.
Wilson, 36, of Greeley, hasn’t been diagnosed, but he’s positive he’s on the spectrum somewhere. His “neurospicy” brain, as he prefers to call it, has contributed to his obsession with the weather. Without it, he’s not sure he’d be the Front Range’s most well-known independent meteorologist as the man behind the Denver & Front Range Weather page on Facebook.
“My mother recalls me standing at the door at age 6 and looking at the sky,” Wilson says. “When ‘Twister’ was released, that was it. That was the genesis of my meteorological career.”
It took some time for him to establish himself in his profession, and he had to find his own way to do it. There weren’t many jobs available in 2012, when he graduated from the University of Northern Colorado with a degree in meteorology. He worked in after-school programming for an elementary school and did odd jobs, such as bussing tables at The Tilted Kilt Pub & Eatery, before he took the advice of his friends and brother and started forecasting as a public service.
Amassing a following
In 2016, Wilson created a Facebook page, Treasure Valley Weather HQ, in response to the worst winter the Idaho region had experienced in 30 years. Since he grew up in the area, he figured it would be a good place to start.
He didn’t expect the page to be successful—not at first, anyway. Independent meteorology was “virtually nonexistent,” he says.
He began pushing out forecasts so residents could navigate the storms the punishing season threw at them. People took notice, and within a month, the page gained more than 6,000 followers. He never thought about the money it could bring in.
“I wanted to do it to be a servant,” Wilson says. “If you do this for the money, you’ll get eaten alive.”
He had his first sponsor, a hardware store, by the end of that year. Soon after, people began to subscribe to his page. He started the Denver & Front Range Weather page the following year.
Now, a decade later, the Treasure Valley Facebook page has 111,000 followers, and Denver & Front Range Weather has nearly 400,000. There are more than 60 businesses who pay him to keep doing what he’s doing full-time. More than 250 residents subscribe to his services, either on Facebook or on his website, kodythewxguy.com, through Patreon.
“You’d be kind of shocked at how much money I made last year,” Wilson says. “I’m kind of shocked by it, honestly.”
It’s enough for him to own a home in Greeley and another in Boise, Idaho, that he plans to turn into a short-term rental he can stay at when he’s visiting family.
Forecasts with a chance of sass
Wilson says he distinguishes himself from TV weather personalities by emphasizing open communication, honesty and transparency. He strives to be perfect and knows he won’t be. Colorado remains one of the toughest places to predict the weather because of the chaotic nature of the mountains.
“Meteorologists used to say ‘This will happen,’” Wilson says. “I say ‘I think this could happen.’ I give people all the information they need so no one is surprised about the outcome. Sometimes it’s OK to say ‘I don’t know.’”
His followers love him for two reasons: He’s accurate and he’s spicy. Yes, they know that means neurospicy. He reminds them nearly every day.
Leslie Young, an Arvada resident, appreciates his quirky sense of humor and values his forecasts because of the frequent trips she makes to care for her 92-year-old father in Grand Junction. She also owns horses, so she’s always asking herself if “her boys” need their blankets for the night. She sends Wilson $50 a month as a subscriber and, occasionally, an extra $50 just because she finds his forecasts both accurate and entertaining.
“Kody doesn’t just report the weather,” Young says. “He educates us about it. He’s literally dedicated his life to that work.”
Indeed, the weather never takes a day off, and neither does Wilson. His forecasts are available at 6:30 a.m., except on Saturdays and Sundays, when he allows himself a half-hour of grace.
His edgy humor accompanies his morning forecasts like bacon with scrambled eggs. He calls his followers “chicken nuggets,” teases ornery commenters and warns those who are “certified fun suckers” to go away “peacefully, because it won’t end well for you.”
“I will never apologize for being myself on this page,” he says in his welcome posts to new followers. “I wish more people had the courage to be themselves.”
Meteorology remains his passion, so much so that he pursues it in his spare time as well. He hopes to ramp up his storm chasing side project this summer, something he’s done since 2008. That’s more dangerous than ever, he says, because social media encourages anyone with a phone to get close to tornadoes. But he loves the weather too much to stop.
Whenever there’s a storm, he admires it in his doorway, staring at the sky just like he did as a kid.
“One of my favorite sounds on Earth is thunder,” he says.
