Heatwave gaffe fuels another hot forecast: viewers love a male model

Arizona viewers got a bit more acquainted with Cory McCloskey in a Q& A Friday that turned from how his weather map ‘populates itself’ to his days as a male model. Photograph: Fox 10 Phoenix

A week of extreme weather conditions in the US is due to be topped off by near 3,000F heat in Arizona – at least according to one local weather forecaster and former male model.

Cory McCloskey, weatherman for Fox 10 in Phoenix, inadvertently predicted a furnace-level heatwave on Wednesday after his map malfunctioned on air, showing four-figure temperatures across the Arizona area.

And the forecaster caused Fox 10 temperatures to soar once again on Friday, when he brought in his old modelling portfolio for a video Q&A explainer on the gaffe.

Viewers were variously sent scrambling for their rosary beads, loved ones and hand fans on Wednesday after McCloskey’s weather segment predicted the kind of temperatures that could liquefy bronze and iron.

Weather map goes haywire with apocalyptic temperatures.

“Wow 750 degrees in Gila Bend right now,” McCloskey said as his map began to malfunction.

“And 1,270 in Ahwatukee,” he continued. “Now I’m not authorised to evacuate Ahwatukee but this temperature seems pretty high.”

Cave Creek was the hottest place on McCloskey’s map at 2,960F, with Wickenburg a close second at 2,385F.

Fox 10 Phoenix hosted a 50-minute YouTube Q&A with McCloskey on Friday in which the forecaster explained that his weather map “populates itself” with temperatures. McCloskey said had not checked them before the broadcast as “it has never been a problem, ever”.

“When I turned round to the map and I saw quadruple digit temperatures, you know me, I immediately thought, this will be fun,” he told his colleague Samia Khan.

The wide-ranging Q&A focused on McCloskey’s college education, his upbringing, and his favourite Pokemon character, until – in a moment almost as surreal as McCloskey’s predicting of 3,000F heat in central Arizona – the forecaster revealed, unprompted, that he had “brought something”.

That something turned out to be McCloskey’s old modelling portfolio from the mid-1980s. “Oh wow,” McCloskey said, as Khan held up one shot of him posing in a vest behind some bars. “I didn’t know that was happening.”

The pair proceeded to thumb through perfectly preserved shots of McCloskey in ski gear, in hunting gear and in underwear.

“That’s the kind of stuff I was up to back in those days,” McCloskey.