Meteorologist Adam Krueger is on a hot streak — pun intended.
During the hottest summer on record, the Houston meteorologist has gone viral again and again under the handle @weatheradam with his pop song-inspired weather reports. While his TV hits sprinkled with popular bars are quite impressive, TikTok’s favorite Texas weather guy is still delivering important news on a daily basis.
“Houston weather can be very extreme and kind of turn on a dime — it blows my mind how much rain can come down in a short amount of time here,” Krueger tells InsideHook. “Obviously when these big things happen, like flooding or hurricanes, you probably won’t see Eminem lyrics. But when the weather’s light, I can have some fun.”
We spoke with the CW39 Houston’s chief meteorologist about how he writes his scripts, and how the rains down in Africa impact the Houston region.
InsideHook: I feel like you’d discovered this great concept when you started inserting Wordle into your weather reports. Now it’s evolved into something more mainstream: You’ve taken a not-so-great weather report and made it nice.
Adam Krueger: Yeah. I mean, it’s funny, because especially around Texas in the summertime, you get these long stretches where there’s very little change in the weather. And what I’m doing on social media probably has helped frame things differently. It just changed things up on our end — just a little bit of a different mind frame every day, instead of walking in saying the exact same thing every day.
Do you find these pop song-centric reports difficult to create?
Yes, it is difficult. But I’ve been doing it for a while. I think there’s a reason why you don’t see a whole lot of people doing it the exact same way, because it’s not for the faint of heart. The thought process and managing the requests and then executing it and trying to be clever about it and all that stuff — it’s hard. I’ve done a lot, but it’s still hard every time.
What’s more difficult: song lyrics or film dialogue? You’ll occasionally do something like Office Space. That’s 90 pages of dialogue versus 90 words in a song.
They’re both tricky for different reasons. I find that the movie lines are easier to say because there’s no missing musical rhythm that goes with that. Whereas if you’re doing a song lyric, your brain almost wants to go to the song — but you still have to talk like a normal person.
I think that’s why the recent Eminem one was so impressive.
Yeah, the Eminem ones seem to be some of the most popular. The execution of saying it when it’s a song is more difficult. But the research that goes into the movie ones — there’s so much content, so those take more time to prepare. I can go to YouTube and look up the funniest lines from Office Space or something like that, and it’ll help a little, but you’re always gonna miss some. You can only do so much.
It was funny because I love The Simpsons, and it took me a long time to even want to tackle that one. Because it was like, how do you boil down decades of the funniest stuff to just a couple of lines?
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That’s hard to say. I’ve lived in Texas for a long time, so I feel like a Texan, even though I’m not from here. But I worked in San Antonio for a little while, and I worked in Austin for a long time before coming here. I think it helps to have some local knowledge. Obviously Houston is a little different weather-wise, and also at the same time not that different from the overall patterns we see in Texas that I’m very familiar with now.
I feel like what gives me more of an edge is I’ve always been a word guy — I feel like I can be kind of clever with words, and I make connections that other people don’t. And I also enjoy doing creative things with graphics. It’s not like I’m skewing away from the weather story at all — it actually sometimes enhances the weather story, to make a graphic that I otherwise wouldn’t have if I wasn’t thinking of a certain lyric.
Have weather patterns ever inspired what song you’ll use?
Yeah. Months ago, I had some things in mind that I wanted to do when the right thing was in place to do it. There are some lines where I’m like, “Oh, I can’t wait to do this line.” I started this in the winter, so there were a bunch where I was like, when it gets hot, this thing will be perfect.
I did “Africa” by Toto. And I knew a few months before I did that one that I just needed a reason to talk about Africa. So I was waiting for when we get plumes of dust that, this time of year, usually come from Africa.
Do you feel drawn to do any regional acts? Should you be doing Destiny’s Child and ZZ Top?
At first, I felt like I should have been doing more Houston things — then I quickly realized how widespread this was. It made me want to do things that are more universally known. When I say “universal,” I’m talking worldwide. It blows my mind how many comments I get from Denmark, Australia, just so many countries.
That begs the question: who is that? Who is your audience? Your reach is worldwide, but you’re doing weather for a very specific person.
I try to keep “my audience” as much of a moving target as possible. I almost feel like it’s a game between me and the algorithm — not that I know much about the algorithm of TikTok or Instagram or whatever, but I don’t want it to just funnel one certain type of person towards me.
I just think it’s really cool that there’s this thing happening here, where [what I’m creating is] entertainment, and at the same time, people are actually either learning a little bit about the weather or getting part of their forecast about Houston, just from my videos.
It’s nearly fall. How do you feel about being at this point in the summer?
I feel like we look at our summer the same people up north look at their winter. Summertime is when we’re hiding indoors. It’s too hot to go outside and we’re lacking sun on our faces. It’s almost like a running joke down here: Is this the heat? Once it hits, in June or even in May, you know there’s going to be months until there’s a cold front. And it’s like, okay, here we go, buckle in. It’s like a reverse version of a seasonal depression that people in cold areas get in the winter.
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