This installment of Milwaukee Talks introduces OnMilwaukee.com's newest columnist, Vince Condella. He's a Harley-riding "Seinfeld" junkie with a hankering for head bangin' tunes and a deep appreciation for good guitar, quality coffee and ice hockey. Lest we fail to mention he's also a big fan of jet streams, warm fronts and the ever-popular cumulus cloud.

He's also FOX 6's Chief Meteorologist, one of the 15 best local TV Weathercasters in America, according to "Partly Sunny," a 1995 book by Alan Fields.

As an 8-year old growing up in Lombard, Ill., in the western suburbs of Chicago, Vince Condella would try to copy the style of his hero, longtime Windy City weathercaster Harry Volkman. He performed his own weather broadcasts in his parent's basement where his dad helped him paste a United States map on a huge sheet of metal. Young Vince put magnets on the back of home-made weather symbols to stick them on the map, just like Harry did every night on TV.

Some of his passion for weather comes from his ability to confront his childhood fear of thunderstorms. "I was scared to death of thunderstorms, they were a major phobia of mine," he says.

His best friend's dad, a pilot for the now defunct Eastern Airlines, also sparked his early interest in weather. Vince would go out to O'Hare International Airport on the weekends and watch the airline meteorologists consult with the pilots on the best routes to fly, based on upper air winds and weather. That was cool stuff for a kid in grade school. Add the fact that he witnessed the constant change of Midwest weather first-hand and you can see why the weather bug bit young Vince early in life.

Despite his childhood weather interest, he never planned on getting into broadcast meteorology. Vince set his sights on teaching and research in college. He went to Purdue University, receiving his bachelors degree in atmospheric sciences in 1977, then went on to the UW-Madison, completing his master's degree in 1979.

A year into his doctorate program at Madison, Vince saw a job opening on the department bulletin board for a weekend meteorologist at a local television station.

He had never been on TV before, but figured a little spending money wouldn't be a bad thing.

OMC:Tell us about more about the first TV gig?

VC: I carefully prepared my resume and went for the interview. The news director promptly dumped my resume in the circular file, stuck me in front of a camera and rolled the video recorder. Despite my heart leaping up into my throat in a fit of nervousness, I passed the audition and the weekend job was mine. I immediately fell in love with the broadcast aspect of meteorology and decided the Ph.D. could wait. That was 1980.

OMC: When did you get to FOX 6?

VC: I was very, very lucky that I ended up coming to FOX 6 shortly after my Madison job in February of 1982. It was one of those things, the path just opened up for me here.

OMC: Talk about your style and the nature of TV news a bit.

VC: I think it is totally a personal thing. There has to be a connection between the viewer and the person they are watching whether it is news, weather or sports. It is totally individual.

A lot of people will refer to the other meteorologists at the other stations as my competition. But not really, because there is only one type of person. There is only one me, one Paul Joseph, one John Malan. I can't get on the air and make someone enjoy and like watching me. It doesn't happen. The way to do it, I think, is to just be yourself (whatever that is) and be natural and conversational, just let the chips fall as they may. There will be some people who like you, others won't.

If people don't like my presentation style, there are other options. What I have to offer may be unique to one viewer, but not to another.

Bart Adrian has been my partner in crime here (we know each other from way back in graduate school) and we've been working together for a long time; we always say that we are talking one on one with the person sitting at home. We are just coming into the living room and say here's what's going on today in the weather.