David Lynch, who passed away at the age of 78 on January 16, left an incredible legacy of film and television. Twin Peaks, Dune, Blue Velvet, the list goes on. But along with those things, not to mention music and books, over the past several years, Lynch produced something equally odd and delightful — his daily weather reports. Lynch began these daily weather forecasts in 2005, in the form of a daily phone call to LA radio station INDIE 103.1. He later moved them to his own website, producing them until 2010.
Then, suddenly, during the COVID pandemic in 2020, he brought them back. Since David Lynch was quarantined with the rest of us, for the next 2 1/2 years, the eccentric and strangely lovable filmmaker gave Angelenos his daily weather report. He did this all the way until the end of 2022. Sometimes he spoke of other things that struck his mind, in typical Lynch fashion. Just as often, he kept it simple. Here are a couple of our favorites:
Known for the darkness and horror in his work, Lynch nevertheless had polite Midwestern charm to spare. This was a man who used phrases like “by golly” totally unironically. “Here in LA, by golly, we’ve got rain, gray, and gloomy with a slight breeze… This should — I hope — burn off by this afternoon and we’ll have sunshine back and 70 degrees. Have a great day.” Often, you could see the steam from his cup of coffee, no doubt black as midnight on a moonless night, rising up. We hope there were occasional donuts to go with them.
One particularly heartbreaking weather report came after his friend and frequent collaborator, composer Angelo Badalamenti passed. Lynch reported no weather conditions that day, instead simply saying “Today, no music.” It wasn’t long after that that David Lynch stopped his daily weather reporting. And from that point on, we didn’t hear much from the man publicly.
Luckily, all of his post-2020 weather reports on DAVID LYNCH THEATER are collected in one big YouTube playlist. So if you need to hear the man’s iconic voice today talking about sunshine, or lack thereof? They are here on YouTube, preserved, hopefully, for all time. And by golly, that’s just a wonderful thing. You can find the whole playlist here.
