Well before he was known as “The Dancing Weatherman”, Nick Kosir was “The Rapping Weatherman”.
“I used to wrap the weather in a past life from 2008 to about 2012. Like anything that ran its course, I ended up getting a new job in Charlotte,” he said. “When you start a new job, or at least when I started that job, my bosses wanted credibility to be the first thing that we focus on.” He added, “I put the rapping on the back burner and really never revisited it. The dancing thing eventually replaced that, in 2019 on accident, and I’ve been doing that ever since.”
Born in Cleveland, Nick Kosir was raised in the suburbs and from a young age remembers a great fascination for weather. “Back when I was in probably the fifth grade, I remember playing outside one day. I was playing basketball. I look up, the sky was black and it started raining real hard. So I went in. And of course, as a young kid, when you’re not playing outside, you’re probably going to watch TV. So I turn on the TV and I go, ‘Why is every station not showing my favorite TV shows?’ Instead, they’re showing this guy in a suit, talking about green blobs moving along on a map and I realize it’s the weather guy,” Kosir said.
“Then I started paying attention and I go, ‘Oh my gosh, there’s a tornado warning in my town, in my county.’ And I was equal parts fascinated and terrified,” Nick Kosir later added, “Each time I see a tornado warning, to this day, even if I’m covering it, I feel that feeling. And I realize that that feeling is probably called passion. That’s how I realized that I have been drawn to tornadoes from a very young age.”
The University of Akron graduate originally wanted to play football but Kosir said, “I walked on and realized that the humans that were playing on that football team were a lot bigger and stronger and faster than me. So after a year, I cut my losses and focused on broadcasting.”
It wasn’t clear at the time where in the industry Nick Kosir would fall. “I knew that I wanted to be in the broadcasting realm. I just wasn’t sure what realm that was going to be.” Kosir later added, “I started volunteering my time at the campus radio station and TV station. Got demos of both radio and TV put together. I sent more radio demos and TV demos, but I ended up getting hired as a news reporter in this tiny station in Mansfield, Ohio.”
It’s in Mansfield where Kosir began filling in as a weatherman.
“I did a pretty good job,” Kosir recalled, “So they kept me there and after doing that for a couple days, I go, ‘Oh, duh. This was [I should be doing] the whole time.’ So then I went back and got my degree, and I’ve been doing the weather ever since.”
From Ohio, Kosir traveled the country presenting the weather in Charlotte, North Carolina, Beaumont, Texas, and Twin Falls, Idaho. He joined FOX Weather in 2021. It was in Charlotte where he started dancing.
“It was probably 2017. Our bosses at FOX 46 sat us all down and said, ‘Okay, we want you guys to start posting on social.’ And we said, ‘Okay.’ And they said, ‘Yeah, we want you to do that 12 times a day.’ And we said, ‘What?’” Kosir recalled, “That’s just such a huge number. And we all kind of freaked out about it. And then eventually most of us got over it. And I started posting 12 times a day on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.”
The numerous posts lead to Kosir scrolling for inspiration. “One day I had 11 posts done. I needed one more and I wanted to just do it at work so I can go home and be done for the day and I was just scrolling through my feed. And then I saw these guys do a dance. It was the Williams fam, who did this dance called the Slide, like this challenge.
“And I thought to myself, ‘Hey, I think I can do that.’ So I did it, posted it, and people liked it. I couldn’t believe it. I never prided myself on dancing and I have never taken a professional dance class. I guess I’m self-taught and I’ve been doing it ever since.”
Kosir’s dancing took him all the way to So You Think You Can Dance?, a FOX reality show. He recalled the recording, “I just remember it was very quick. We didn’t have a lot of time and so. I am always a super harsh critic of myself, and I remember thinking, ‘Oh man, I didn’t do very well,’ when we got done. But once we added it up and it ended up airing, I remember thinking, ‘Oh, that was cool.’ And I made great friends.”
Still, Kosir’s most proud moment of his career was covering Hurricane Arthur in 2014. “I was able to do a live hit. From the eye of that storm. I thought that was really cool. When the hit started the wind was blowing like crazy and then it all went calm. That meant the eye was over us.”
Nick Kosir called it cool for a couple of reasons, “Number one, I never experienced that before. Number two, it means that we perfectly predicted where to report from. We nailed exactly where the eye was going to be.” He later added, “Luckily, it wasn’t a huge destructive hurricane, but it’s still created some issues as it was a category two, and so I was able to see firsthand what. A hurricane does and what the aftermath looks like.”
There is one weatherman misconception Nick Kosir does want to correct.
“I’ve heard a billion times they say, I wish I could be wrong half the time and still get paid. And that’s just not true anymore. Technology has come so far. We’re right a lot more often than we’re wrong.” He later added, “With the advances in technology that we’ve made over the last ten years, we’re able to track some hurricanes and we can pinpoint within 1 or 2 miles where they’re going to make landfall weeks ahead of time. So I would start listening to a meteorologist say with a lot more confidence.”
Krystina Alarcon Carroll is a news media columnist and features writer for Barrett Media. She has experience in almost every facet of the industry including: digital and print news; live, streamed, and syndicated TV; documentary and film productions. Her prior employers have included NY1 and Fox News Digital and the Law & Crime Network. You can find Krystina on X (formerly twitter) @KrystinaAlaCarr.
