Ironically, the majority of a meteorologist’s career is unscripted. That’s the one thing viewers often don’t comprehend about our jobs. We ad-lib from start to finish, our “scripts” are the graphics we create. Anchors read the news from monitors. Reporters—unless they’re live or covering breaking news—have taped, edited stories. Meteorologists are like Cirque du Soleil performers: we practice and know what we have to do—after a while—by instinct alone. And yet we are still flying solo. Anything could happen.

I have slipped and fallen on air. I have accidentally cursed. You try saying “Fork’s Sake, North Dakota” when you’re utterly exhausted. I once broke down in hysterics when I tossed a Sonny sun that swerved last minute like a boomerang and managed to adhere to Cliff’s head instead of the green screen. When he yanked it off, the sun left a clean circle that revealed how much makeup he wore on air.

When our entertainment reporter left for a job at an LA station two days before the Palm Springs International Film Festival, Eva and I were tapped to interview Oscar-winning actors and actresses on the red carpet at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, including an iconic actor who was so haughty and condescending to me that I turned away from him and began to interview a local citizen who had slept in a lawn chair all night just to get a front row seat.

“I don’t think it was worth it now, do you?” I asked.

That unscripted moment not only led every entertainment news report the next day, but it also garnered me a dozen roses as an apology from the actor and a penthouse suite in a fancy hotel for the lawn chair interviewee.

The ironic thing is that—even with all our missteps—this is what viewers enjoy the most. They love it when we mess up. They love it when we fumble. It’s because we’re human, and they like to be reminded of that. Even though we appear composed on air almost every night, coming to them in their homes at every hour of the day and talking to them as if we’re family members, people like to know that their local TV personalities and favorite celebrities are just like them—human.

And though they may want us to screw up on occasion, they also want us to overcome our mistakes. They root for us. Because we become part of their lives. We become trusted friends. We become family.

I check my makeup and take a deep breath. The anchors are watching me. Even Lisa is pacing around in the studio like a nervous cat.

“How do I look, Ron?”

“Call me Icicle,” he says. “When we’re not on air. We’re friends. Friends still have nicknames for each other, right?”

I nod.

“You look great. Are you ready?”

I shrug.

“You’re always ready, aren’t you? You live for moments like this, don’t you?”

He winks, and my nervousness deflates.

“Take your position, Sonny,” I hear Lisa call.

I position myself in front of the green screen.

“And we’re live in three, two, one…”

The anchors introduce me with all the gravitas of a state senator who wants to address a personal scandal. The world spins. I am live.

“Thank you,” I say.

I turn toward the camera and click. A black-and-white image of a snowstorm appears behind me.

“I was seven years old when the Blizzard of 1978 hit Michigan.”

I click again. An old photograph of a girl sledding off the top of her roof and down a giant bank of snow pops up.

“That’s me. The snow was so intense and the wind so strong that I could climb out of my second-story bedroom window and sled right off the roof like I was on the mountain of a ski resort.”

Another photo pops up.

“This is Front Street during that blizzard. As you can see, snow engulfed downtown, making the storefronts disappear. And right here—” I point “—you can see on the marquee the movie that was playing at the State Theatre that day. Oh, God! Remember? With George Burns and John Denver?”

The anchors chuckle and nod.

“I had just gone to see that movie before the blizzard hit, and it became a long-running joke in our house because my dad would look out the window every half hour. The snow just wouldn’t stop. It was coming down in heaps. He would groan and say, ‘Oh, God.’”

Crew members laugh.

“The Blizzard of 1978 raged for two straight days, the result of two massive storm systems colliding over Michigan, with lake-effect snow contributing to the natural disaster. When it was over, some areas saw as much as three feet of snow. Here in Traverse City, our snowfall was around two feet. Winds gusted as high as seventy miles an hour. Windchills fell to thirty below. Drifts were as high as fifty feet. Three people died, including an eleven-year-old girl. It took days for residents to shovel their homes clear. Many still consider it to be the worst winter storm in living memory.” I turn to look at the photo before continuing.

“That was the first time I remember noticing—even as a little girl—the incredible power of weather. I was fascinated by it. I watched this very station around the clock to see what was happening. It was my window to the world. The blizzard was so daunting that firefighters worked alongside plow drivers—including the man who still plows my mother’s home—driving in front of them to open up the roadway. I remember watching a firefighter jump into a snowbank so deep that he just disappeared. The other men had to pull him free before they could run in to do their jobs. I remember people creating makeshift dogsleds—with their own dogs—to get to the grocery so they could bring stranded neighbors and elderly friends food. Roughly one hundred thousand cars were stranded on Michigan’s highways. Snowmobile patrols helped those who were stranded. Volunteers shoveled highways and overpasses clear.”

I stop again.

“What I remember—in the most difficult of times, in tragedy and hardship—was our resourcefulness and kindness to those who needed it the most. We met that challenge with hard work and great humor, and we continue to do that to this day.”

Another photo appears behind me. It is of me and Joncee making snow angels in the backyard.

“This is my sister, Joncee. She loved snow and winter more than anything in this world. She was my angel on earth.” I can feel tears rise, and I take a deep breath. “She died when I was sixteen. She was still a little girl. It was a tragic accident, in the middle of winter, and it stays with me to this day. She is the reason I became a meteorologist. The fact that perhaps I could save a life—maybe even yours—with a forecast or a warning fills me with purpose. I have made a number of mistakes in my life and my career. But choosing to be a meteorologist and choosing to return home are not among them. And I’ve never apologized for being human. I’ve never apologized for fighting for myself, my family and what is right. I’ve learned that you can take the girl out of Michigan, but you can’t take the Michigan out of the girl.”

The cameraman actually whoops.

“We have some tough weather and days ahead, including a massive polar vortex on its way that we’re forecasting here first, which I’ll be back to bring you the latest on in just a few minutes. But I know that we can and will get through this together because the only thing greater than a Great Lake is us. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for standing with me through what has been a tough winter for Sonny Dunes. And thank you for welcoming me home again and making me a part of your family.”

I throw it back to the anchors. “We’ll be back in a moment.”

We cut to commercial and the set explodes into applause. Icicle rushes over and lifts me into the air, swinging me in a circle.

“Well done,” Lisa says. “You just might have pulled our frostbitten rears from the fire.”

When I return to do my weather segment, I glance at the monitor. It now reads, SONNY DUNES, TRVC CHIEF METEOROLOGIST.

I glance quickly off-screen at Lisa. She smiles ever so briefly and then rolls her hands to remind me to keep going.

“As I mentioned earlier, a brutal polar vortex—which could be historic in terms of cold and length—is headed our way…”

When I head home in the bitter cold night, I turn on the defroster but not the heat. I am already warm enough inside.

“How do you feel?” I shout over the wind.

“Like an icicle.”

“Icicle feels like an icicle,” I yell. “Very funny.”

We have spent the day shooting segments on the polar vortex, rushing in and out of the news van, heat cranked, to stay, well, not just thawed but alive. The current temperature is minus eleven. That’s the high for the day. The windchill is sixty-eight below. We are taking turns shooting segments about the polar vortex, and we have one remaining, which will require the most time.

“I can’t feel my fingers,” Icicle says as we jump back into the van. He removes his gloves and shakes his hands. He sticks them in front of the vents.

He looks over at me, clearly irritated.

“What?” I ask.

“Okay, what’s going on? I’ve lived here my whole life. You’ve lived in the desert the last few decades. You should be freezing, complaining, screaming right now. And yet you seem warm as a thermal blanket.”

I shrug. “Inner strength?”

Icicle looks at me. And then he leans over and grabs my arm, squeezing it under my coat. He reaches for my back.

“I am so reporting you to management,” I joke.

“What do you have on?” he asks. “Give it up!”

I look at him. “I learned from my mentor at WGN that you have to stay warm and dry when you cover winter storms and are outside for long periods of time,” I say. “So I go to the pharmacy and stock up on the patches and heat wraps that athletes wear when they have muscle aches. I stick them all over my body and then put on a wet suit. That keeps me warm and dry all day. It’s like I have a fireplace burning inside my clothes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that?”

“Rookies need to learn some things the hard way.”

“Who’s the one who caught Polly Sue?”

“Who’s the one who got you this job?”

He eyes me warily before holding out his hand. “Truce?”

“Truce.”

I start to shake his hand, but Icicle pivots and grabs my bag off the seat. He yanks a box of heating therapy patches from my purse.

“Hey!” I yell.

“Is for horses,” he says. “Get out for a minute. I need to strip and stick these on my body.”

“I’ve dressed you,” I tease. “You’re like my little brother.”

He looks at me. “Get out. You’re just saying that because you don’t want to get cold again. Payback stinks.”

I open the door and the wind smacks me in the face again. I hop around for what seems like an eternity until he honks a minute or two later.

“Icicle is warm.” He sighs contentedly.

I laugh.

“Before we freeze again, let’s review some of our footage. I just want to make sure we don’t have to do this all over again.”

He grabs the camera and hits play.

For the last few hours, we have shot multiple segments of varying subjects about the polar vortex. Some pieces are only fifteen or thirty seconds and will run as PSA’s during prime time. We covered topics ranging from how to protect your pipes, pets, livestock, car and home during this epic cold spell, to how-to’s: how to make your own emergency-survival kit for your vehicle, how to avoid frostbite, which can occur in mere minutes in such extreme temperatures, and how to locate the nearest warming center should you lose power.

We spent a couple of hours in and out of the studio so that Icicle could tape his special segment for kids, “Ice, Ice Baby.” The title—and accompanying Vanilla Ice song that introduces it—was totally his idea, a wink-wink at his winter history as well as the polar vortex. He taped a segment in which he demonstrated how cold it was by tossing a cup of boiling water into the air that crystallized into ice and snow before hitting the ground. He also taped a science experiment for kids to try at home with school canceled demonstrating how a soap bubble freezes.

Icicle was exceedingly nervous at first, though I convinced him this idea was brilliant, not only in educating kids about science and the weather but also in drawing in younger viewers, which the station desperately needs. His first segment will run during Saturday morning cartoons, and I already know in my gut the initial response will be very strong.

But I had as much to teach him about the art of weather forecasting as he had to teach the kids about the science of weather.

“A meteorologist’s job is to break down complicated scientific facts into something the general public can easily understand. I approach the weather like I did as a journalism student at Northwestern: I ask, ‘Who? What? When? Where? Why?’ And I treat each segment as both news and entertainment,” I explained to him. “We are journalists, teachers and entertainers. But never forget that we meteorologists are usually the only real scientists a viewer encounters every single day.”

When he was still having difficulty, I said, “I always pretend like I’m talking to my mom. If she gets it, I know everyone else will, too.”

His segments soared after that.

“Water is so cool,” he said in one of his segments after our talk. “We’re surrounded by water in Traverse City.” He went on to explain how water can exist as a liquid, a gas and a solid at the same time, and then he demonstrated to kids how boiling water droplets—when tossed into the air at such extreme temperatures—fall as ice crystals.

“Yes,” I had cheered, so enraptured and enthused by what he was saying.

After that, I continued my series on how the polar vortex is impacting life in our local resort towns. This morning, we went to Leland, famous for its Fishtown filled with historic weathered fishing shanties, smokehouses and fish tugs along the Leland River. One can imagine what it would have been like in the early 1900s to live and work in this small fishing village nestled by the shore of Lake Michigan, which still operates as one of the only working commercial fishing villages in the State. I interviewed the head of the Fishtown Preservation Society about the dramatic and necessary measures they’re taking to protect the historic area from the incredible ice forming on the Great Lakes, which—in the wind—could cause significant damage to the historic shanties when it moves inland. The Great Lakes are so vast that it is extremely rare for the entire lake to freeze over, but my prediction is that nearly 90 percent of Lake Michigan will be frozen over before winter ends.

And that is where we are headed next, for our final segment: to the beach on one of the coldest days in the last hundred years.

We pull into the snow-drifted parking lot of a public beach in Leelanau County. We bundle back up, gather our equipment and head across the cold, crunchy sand and hike along the ice-strewn beach. My eyes are watering so much in the icy wind that when I first see what we came to film, I think it is an icy mirage. I wipe my eyes, and then stop cold—pardon the pun—in my tracks.

The ice caves of Leelanau.

“They’re so beautiful,” Icicle says.

A local photographer reached out to me about this rare winter phenomenon in which massive caves of ice form, hollowed out and worn by the waves. Different kinds of ice formations occur because of a variety of reasons, including meteorological conditions, the location and the wave action, so ice caves can vary greatly along the shoreline. But it’s rare that anchor ice builds up to such great heights—two stories!—that one can explore the caves as if they were spelunking.

“I feel like I am in another world,” I say.

“We are in another world.”

To say that the ice caves are spectacularly beautiful would be akin to saying that Sophia Loren was cute. They are breathtaking. Unique. Surreal, as if Dr. Seuss had drawn them.

The caves rise from the water and the shoreline. Many are as thick as castle fortresses, while some are as fragile and as translucent as a piece of paper. Many of the caves have ten-foot icy stalactites dangling from their tops. Many are big enough to drive our news van through, while others are barely big enough for me to squeeze my body into them.

There is a bit of danger, so we are careful. But the ice is thick, and the photographer has shot here many times already and told us it is safe to explore.

“Sonny!” Icicle yells. “Over here!”

He is as giddy as a kid, rushing from spot to spot. His camera is out, and he is shooting, his enthusiasm as palpable as the first time I saw the Eiffel Tower and took pictures of it from every angle.

But I feel the same: we are witnessing a rare natural event that might not occur again in our lifetime.

Suddenly, the world brightens. The clouds clear. The ice comes alive. The world shimmers, glimmers and shines. The ice takes on a life of its own. It reflects the blue of the sky; the lake water becomes glitter under glass. I stand in the middle of an ice cave and stare out at the lake, frozen for miles.

It is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. I take a picture in my mind and then shut my eyes to store it forever. I have seen countless sunsets in my life. I have seen the sky turn so pink over the mountains in Palm Springs that I have felt my knees quake. I have watched the sun melt into Lake Michigan like a Dreamsicle while holding my sister’s hand. I have sipped wine in Amalfi as the sun slunk sexily into the sea under Vesuvio’s eye.

But this, this is so unreal, so spectacular that I begin to cry.