NEWS10 ABC Meteorologist Steve Caporizzo got his big break in 1980 when he was a sophomore in college…though “big” is a strong word. “I wanted to do weather professionally—not just on the college radio station,” says the Lyndon State grad. “A small radio station in Brattleboro, VT—WTSA—decided to take a chance on me.” The station paid Caporizzo just $2 per day, but the job kickstarted a four-decade career in meteorology, which brought him to Bangor, ME; Springfield, MA; and finally Channel 10 in Albany, where he’s now worked for 33 years.
While his job has remained the same for 40-plus years, the way he gets it done has certainly changed with the times. “In Bangor I was making maps with magic markers on the wall,” the Georgetown, MA native says. Today, in addition to having much more advanced technology to actually relay the weather on the news, Steve and other meteorologists also now have forecasting technology—computer modeling, satellite pictures and doppler radar—that allows them to predict the weather more accurately than ever before. And no, the iPhone weather app is not one of those technologies. “My forecast is better than any app,” Caporizzo says. “I’ve never even looked at a weather app, to be honest with you.”
Speaking of cynics, what does Caporizzo (his colleagues call him “Cap”) make of the people who claim meteorologists have such an easy job, since they can be wrong half the time? “You always remember the wrong forecasts—you don’t remember the right ones,” he says. “If you’re forecasting a snowstorm and it ends up raining, of course people are going to remember that. It sticks in your mind. But nobody remembers today, where four days ago we said partly sunny, windy and cold with a high of 18. And guess what today is? I can say with high confidence the accuracy on a 24-hour forecast is around 80 percent, which is amazing, because it’s a difficult area—you’ve got mountains, you’ve got valleys and you’re close to the ocean.”
In terms of meteorologists, it’s pretty safe to say that “Cap” has officially made it; he’s had a long, successful career in a market that adores him. Even if you don’t watch the news, if you’ve lived in the Capital Region over the last three decades, you know who Steve Caporizzo is. And if you do watch the Channel 10 news, he’s there in your living room giving the weather evening after evening. (And that’s not even to mention Pet Connection, the weekday pet segment Steve launched in 1980 that to date has helped more than 30,000 homeless pets find homes—that’s a whole other story.) But regardless of all that he’s achieved, Caporizzo has never taken it for granted. “I said to the news director at the Brattleboro radio station, ‘Thank you—I will always do this until you say you don’t want me.’” he says. “That was 42 years ago, and I still do their weather to this day. I make $2 a day doing it, but it reminds me where I came from.”
