Fox 16 Apologizes for the 287 Times Weatherman Jeff Baskin Incorrectly Forecasted the Weather

Local news organization Fox16 today released a statement apologizing for the 287 times so far in 2017 that weatherman Jeff Baskin has incorrectly predicted the weather. The organization says they are embarrassed about the performance and promise to do better in the future.

This is the second such apology that Fox16’s parent company, Nexstar, has had to issue in the past two days. Yesterday Fox16 and KARK news director Austin Kellerman had to issue an apology for incorrectly reporting on the University of Arkansas Athletic Director hiring.

For Baskin, the incorrect forecasts represent an all time low in his career.

“I checked my sources, I felt good about every one of the predictions, but somehow I always seemed to get it wrong,” Baskin states. “I even got it wrong last night predicting what time the storm would hit.  I would blame Arkansas weather, which has been more unpredictable than average this year, but at the end of the day this is on me.”

With 26 days remaining in the year, Baskin has correctly predicted the weather only 15.4% of the time. Other days he failed to get the temperature, precipitation, and timing of weather changes wrong.

The station issued the following apology

We should’ve done a better job recognizing the nuances of the circumstances, reading the maps, and layering our data. Over the next few days, we’ll work to assess exactly what happened, how it happened, and improve our process for reporting the weather quickly and accurately.

We pride ourselves on being right. This time we weren’t.

To those who trust us for their weather, we apologize, and we are learning from this.

You win some and you lose some. Baskin put up a big loss for the whole year.

But today marked a new start in Arkansas weather. Hopefully Baskin can figure it out this time.

This is not the first major incorrect set of predictions from Baskin. In 2013 he famously got into a fight with KARK weatherman Keith Monahan over a weather prediction that he ultimately got wrong. Monahan, for the record, accurately predicted the weather 45.7% so far this year. Until further notice, Fox16 has instructed Baskin to copy Monahan’s weather report.

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Fox 16 Apologizes for the 287 Times Weatherman Jeff Baskin Incorrectly Forecasted the Weather