A few days ago the BBC released its list of the top 100 movies since the year 2000, representing the consensus view of a whopping 177 (!) working film critics. Such lists are made for carping, and I’m not going to do that here, but a point of primary interest here is, What finished first? And the answer to that is David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, which came out in 2003. Not bad for a movie that the director openly admits was two entirely separate project yoked together for no good reason…....

Be that as it may, let’s stick with David Lynch here. I’ve never lived in Los Angeles but I’ve heard multiple times over the years that you used to be able to get David Lynch’s weather report on the radio there every day or most days or something. I did a little poking around and it seems that Indie 103.1 was the station that presented this. Can anyone confirm? Was it really every day? How often was it? Please do chime in with your reminiscences.

On his website in the mid- to late 2000s, Lynch used to present an occasional video weather report for Los Angeles, which is quite hilarious if you stop to think about it. Few would dispute that weather reports are useful things to have—even Angelenos with their samey weather—and yet the utility value of a weather report delivered on the Internet for a specific location and updated irregularly—that’s pretty near useless and obviously part of Lynch’s whole Eagle Scout deadpan dada shtick.

All of the videos were shot in some workspace used by Lynch. A video would start with Lynch intoning the date and then looking out the window and describing whatever was there to observe in a meteorological sense, after which he would sometimes deliver the temperature in Fahrenheit and Celsius as well. They’re all well under a minute long.

The mini-project gave Lynch an opportunity to engage in a blockheaded poetry of sorts. Here, for instance, was the weather report for March 12, 2009: “Mostly blue skies, some white clouds floating by, muted golden sunshine, very still, 52 degrees Fahrenheit, 11 Celsius.”

There were occasional variations. In one early instantiation of the form, Laura Dern is sitting next to him holding a piece of paper that reads “FEB 1”—for that was the date—but you can tell that Lynch hadn’t quite gotten the kinks worked out yet.

No dummy he, Lynch himself made fun of the fact that he was doing this, as evidenced in this tweet from 2010:
 

If you're watching the daily weather report right now, could you please close the window so we can upload a new one?

— David Lynch (@DAVID_LYNCH) February 25, 2010

 
The odd weather updates are fondly remembered by some. Two years ago Funny or Die did a parody of Twin Peaks that incorporated Lynch’s odd weather reports as a target of their sprightly spoofery.

In November 2013 Avishay Artsy interviewed Lynch on KCRW; at the end of the session Artsy asked him for a weather report. Lynch, naturally, obliged:
 

 
Here are a handful of Lynch’s weather reports available on YouTube:

April 17, 2006:

 
February 14, 2006:

 
July 10, 2008:

 
September 4, 2008:

 
October 31, 2008:

 
January 28, 2009:

 
March 12, 2009:

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Kicker Conspiracy: Mark E. Smith reads football scores in his inimitable Mancunian drawl
David Lynch’s quinoa recipe video is as Lynchian as it gets!