Photography: Emily Chalk.
It was the long-range forecast that Chris Brandolino could’ve never predicted – moving his family from America to New Zealand and still being here 13 years later. “If you had told me back then we’d become New Zealand citizens, own a house and walk barefoot in the grocery store, I wouldn’t have believed you,” shares the 51-year-old.
In his job as chief scientist at Earth Sciences New Zealand (formerly NIWA), Chris regularly appears on TV and radio to explain scientific information to help people understand our climate.
It allows him to do what he loves most: talk about weather in actionable ways. Chris has had his head in the clouds since he was a young boy being raised by a single mum in Schenectady, New York.
“Mum told me that from two years old, I would be staring at the sky,” he remembers.
“At six, my teacher noticed this too and asked me to provide a daily weather forecast to my class in exchange for a penny.”
From classroom forecasts to TV screens
Chris would stand confidently on a chair in front and deliver his predictions. No one knew that he’d ring the public weather line every morning to hear a recorded forecast.
“My teacher once asked me the forecast for the next day’s school trip. I knew it was going to rain, but I didn’t want the trip to be cancelled. So I declared it would rain upon leaving to return home.
“And it did! The teacher couldn’t believe it. I’ve always said that was my best forecast. It’s gone downhill since,” he laughs.
“I also used to record the weather forecast every day on VHS tapes from the evening news. I had an archive of five years. Even my own kids ask, ‘Dad, were you picked on?’ because of my freakish obsessio to weather. “But I’ve been blessed in a lot of ways because it gave me direction. I grew up poor, living in state-housing, so having a focus kept me on the straight and narrow. Weather was like my destiny.”
Chris’ break in television came a month after he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Meteorology, when a friend working at a Syracuse TV station suggested he apply for a forecasting job. He worked his way up to becoming the station’s morning weather guy, broadcasting several times a day to a large audience.
When fate stepped in
During this time, Chris met young teacher Sarah Boland at a clambake on the beach. She was dating somebody else, but they kept randomly running into each other, “like the universe was trying to tell us something”, explains Chris.
Fate did have other plans. When Sarah was teaching a weather unit to her 10-year-old students, she called the local TV station to ask if an expert would come in to do a talk.
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“The request came to me,” grins Chris.
“Afterwards, I received this big envelope filled with thank-you letters from the kids, with multiple saying, ‘I think Miss Boland has a crush on you.’ So I asked her out for lunch and that was it.”
The move that changed everything
After their marriage in August 2002, the newlyweds honeymooned in Australia and began dreaming of living there. It inspired Chris to later apply for a job at the Perth-based Bureau of Meteorology. With two small children in tow, the couple moved Down Under for two years. But a TV station lured him back to the US with an offer he couldn’t refuse – being their TV weather presenter and co- hosting an infotainment breakfast show.
“Halfway through my four-year contract, we had our third child and the show, which originally started at 5am, got moved earlier to 4.30am,” he explains.
“The job became too intrusive on family life and I felt like my science blade was becoming dull. I had to make a change.”
Finding home in New Zealand
The answer for a better work/life balance came in 2013, when a job as a meteorologist in New Zealand beckoned. Chris admits he incorrectly assumed New Zealand would be like Australia. And he’s not just talking about the weather.
“Kiwis are more reserved, but I love how it’s worked out for us here. I don’t feel like I’m American any more. Culturally, I feel a bit like I’m in No Man’s Land. Our kids [Sydney, 20, Dominic, 19, and Sofia, 15] identify as Kiwi though, one hundred percent. “But I won’t allow them to ever put pineapple on pizza!”
