The Weather Nut: Dave Hayes’ Sunny Forecast For The Berkshires

There’s nothing more magnetic than someone who loves something so much that they transform before your eyes when they talk about it. The words glow in their mouth like a wand that’s chosen its wizard. I feel grateful when I meet these people for taking the time to appreciate something about the universe that I or any other beholder might have overlooked. 

This is what it’s like talking to Dave Hayes, The Weather Nut. Voted “Best Local Meteorologist” for ten years straight in the Valley Advocate, Hayes (who does not have a meteorology degree) is clearly doing something magnetic. Hayes’ weather operation exists primarily on his Facebook page where he posts daily weather updates for his 58,000 followers… for now. Hayes says he hopes to launch an early version of his mobile app imminently. “Everyone already has a bells and whistles weather app, and most people aren’t that thrilled with them,” Hayes says. 

So what’s Hayes doing differently? He tells stories well beyond what a grid of highs and lows could tell you about “the one thing we all have to deal with: the weather,” as he likes to say. He even writes weather haikus when the mood strikes him.

As a child, Hayes tells me he found himself captivated by weather anchors who’d explain why the weather is doing what it’s doing. He was hooked, and he learned everything he could about the weather from meteorologists and eventually cable and online resources including The Weather Channel and weather.gov. 

Hayes was blown onto the social media landscape in 2011 by the June 1 F3 Springfield, MA tornado. Many friends were looking for his commentary on the weather event, and though he’d already sworn off Facebook forever earlier that year, he did the unthinkable and started a Facebook page: Dave Hayes, The Weather Nut. 

Thirteen years later, after several other major weather events (Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the Blizzard of 2013) doubled his following several times over, Hayes is the most trusted and beloved self-taught local meteorologist/poet I’ve literally ever heard of, with not one, but two songs written about him.

If his readers follow him to the free mobile app and are willing to pay a small annual subscription for the paid version (expected later in 2025), Hayes can hire help for his weather reporting operation and finally take his first real vacation in more than a decade. 

“I’m hoping to keep my effort as a sustainable and reliable enterprise into the future,” Hayes says. In an effort to foster community around talking about the weather, the man’s been diligently interacting with his Facebook community on a daily basis this whole time. 

While he loves a good rainy day at the vineyard or the chase of the first snowfall up to the Berkshires or the western hill towns, Hayes says his ideal vacation weather would be partly sunny skies (he prefers the contrast to clear blue skies) with a breeze gusting 25-30mph. Of course.