Ask Us: Who is the voice behind 4-CAST?

For years now, a select DJ from WRUR’s vast array of students has been bestowed with the honor of competing with the 4-TEMP chick for the honor of informing UR campus with a semi-daily weather report. The current master of meteorological disaster is senior Josh Veazey and you can find him at 4-CAST. He has been gracing our phone lines since securing the position last year following his success on Josh & Evan’s Pretentious Indie Rock Show.There have been three weathercasters in the past five years. 2000 marked the incumbent return of Mike Strumpf at the helm. Almost every day he would update with a new twist on what most expect from their weather forecast. But one can only push the limits for so long. Someone known only as Mary took over 4-CAST in the fall of 2001, though her legacy was short-lived. The updates ceased and for months students were left wondering when the snow would stop.Luckily, Veazey stepped up to the plate in the fall of 2002 and is going strong to this day. Within weeks, word of a 4-CAST that was consistently updated spread throughout River Campus and beyond. Siblings of students at other institutions would call in, just to hear what Veazey would say next. Besides the usual daily dose of witty weather, listeners would sometimes hear stories of bar fights or even jokes. After a dare to sing the weather resulted in a runaway success, Musical Thursdays was born. Each week, to the tune of a popular Green Day song, Veazey would sing through the weather, sometimes even rhyming.Armed with the success of Musical Thursdays, Veazey set his sights on the issue of racial equality and began his campaign to rename the Corner Store to “Freddy’s,” feeling that the Corner Store needed a friendlier name and Frederick Douglass was deserving of more recognition. Unfortunately, his tireless efforts were for naught, as the name has not been changed. The tale lives on in reruns on URTV where senior Nate Smith plays the 4-CAST dude criticizing the Corner Store for being racist because of their refusal to embrace Freddy’s as their true name.Veazey hails from Kansas City, Mo. and will be graduating in May with a Bachelor of Science in physics.