Dete Meserve is the executive producer of the new, highly anticipated PBS Kids animated series Weather Hunters, premiering this Monday September 8th. It’s about a family who makes all kinds of discoveries through their love of weather. The forecast is: Fun! (This Animation Scoop Q&A was edited for length and clarity. Images Credit: PBS Kids.)

Jackson Murphy: This is such a unique concept, to bring Al into animation [and] to have it be about meteorology for kids to learn all about weather. When I was young, I loved when the meteorologists came to school. It was such a highlight of the year. How did you become involved in this project, and do you have that fascination with meteorology as well?

Dete Meserve: I am a weather geek and proud of it. I love the weather, and as a kid loved it too. I grew up in Chicago where we had all kinds of weather throughout the day. The clouds would change color. There’d be different kinds of rain. And I was always really curious about how there were things called weather patterns and that weather might be different here in Chicago than it was, say, in New Orleans. So I was always fascinated by it. So the opportunity to work with Al Roker on a show for PBS about weather just seemed like a natural for me. I had already done 67 half hours of “Ready Jet Go!” for PBS kids, and so I’m a STEM nerd and geek and proud of it — and love any opportunity I can get to talk with kids through story and through fun and entertainment about the wonders of nature, whether we’re looking at clouds or rain or snow — or in the case of “Ready Jet Go!”, looking into the stars. I love it all.

JM: STEM is so important. PBS kids has been behind that my entire lifetime. What you do in this first episode is: You have a fully fleshed out story of the Hunter family and then moving to this new house. Tell me about coming up with the origins of this and how you wanna get people involved in “Weather Hunters”.

DM: That first episode tells the story of them returning to their Great-Grandpa Wallace’s home. So there’s a lot of intergenerational storytelling that’s going on here, in terms of Great-Grandpa Wallace leaving them things for them to discover about the weather, which we’ll find out in the third episode is a mobile weather station, what we call the Vansformer — and other things that he’s left behind. His legacy is there. But this is a young family that’s about hunting for weather, exploring weather, and some of those adventures will take place right there in their home, right there in their backyard, like most of us will experience. But also this new mobile weather station, that comes in a couple of episodes, will allow them to travel to other places, even if that’s the nearby beach. They don’t have to go around the world in order to look at weather, but they’re certainly going to be able to. It seemed like this perfect mix of family, of legacy. LeVar Burton plays Great-Grandpa Wallace, who was a weathercaster himself. So there’s that aspect woven throughout it — and discoveries they make in the house. Lily opens up the windows and the whirligigs, these devices throughout the room, start moving and making beautiful sounds because of the wind. And it’s a beautiful way to demonstrate a simple thing that we all experience every day — the wind — and not only you know what it is and how it works, but also the wonder of it.

JM: Wind is such a huge focal point of the first episode. And yes, daughter Lily is very curious. She goes into the backyard shed / workstation area and finds these FlexSpecs. I love that LeVar Burton is a part of this. He’s doing great now on “Trivial Pursuit”, but of course, in the PBS family with “Reading Rainbow”.

DM: Yeah, he is amazing in this, and you’ll hear him throughout. He has some of the most moving aspects of talking about the weather, reminding us to observe and watch the weather, reminding us about the wonders of it, but also sending little messages to the family to look at this or to investigate that. Or as you mentioned, these FlexSpecs, this amazing gift that he’s left behind for Lily so that she can zoom in closely on things and even have a microscopic view of things. What makes up fog? She’ll be able to use her FlexSpecs to see the actual water molecules of fog.

JM: There are so many kinds of weather. How was it with the story team… laying out this season and the possibilities of which kinds of weather to explore and when to use all of that?

DM: The first approach is to make this foundational, so that we’re covering everything, so a child four to eight can, in these first 40 episodes, really get a great foundation in weather. During the course of that, we’ve also sprinkled in some weather mysteries. Corky, the oldest sister who’s 11, always thinks that there’s a mystery behind everything, and often she’s right. So they, for example, go into the desert to look at the sailing stones. These are the stones in the desert that seem to move overnight with nobody, no humans or animals, moving them. So they investigate that to learn how the wind and the weather actually are able to move these large rocks. That is clearly a mystery all of us, even as adults, are intrigued by. So you’ve got a mystery element there. You’ve got a lot of foundational vocabulary to help kids through. What is precipitation? What does that mean to somebody who’s five years old? So we open that up and get to talk about things like snow and rain and hail, which was super, super fun to do… and show them the wonders of that and how they are kind of in a way related to each other. And then you have this family that’s always looking to explore that. We explore ice and the kids are looking at icicles. They’re going to the garbage can and seeing that there’s icicles on that and on the mailbox. What makes ice and what could they do sometimes that is creative with ice? So the family’s always looking to explore things together and do things together, not just observe, but also do some activities together around the weather.

JM: In addition to learning about weather, you’re learning about television production and modern day TV production about being at home.

DM: I really love that aspect because it’s like putting on a show. But in this case, these kids are summarizing and showing what they’ve learned throughout the episode. They do a weather cast that their neighbors can watch as well and is readily available to help them know what weather is coming. And on top of that, they have all of these production elements that they have to learn.

JM: It’s art imitating life because Al Roker voices meteorologist Al Hunter. Holly Robinson Peete voices his wife Dot, who is his producer. Having them in the booth, and in particular Al because we’re used to seeing him every morning in front of the camera delivering these forecasts, but now he’s delivering lines as a character that is very much him. So how was that experience watching that unfold?

DM: He is absolutely phenomenal. He’s exactly what you think he’s going to be. He’s warm, he’s engaging, he’s funny. When it comes time for the dad humor that’s in the show throughout, he nails that very quickly. I think what people will really love about hearing Al is that he’s such a dad in this show. He has a lot of praise for his kids. He really relates to them not just talking about the weather, but them as individuals. Anyone who loves Al Roker already is going to love him even more. And if you haven’t seen him before, you’re gonna immediately fall in love with this character as a dad. He’s warm and loving with Dot as well. We really wanted to emphasize a loving relationship between the parents. But at the same time, Al doesn’t know everything. He doesn’t necessarily know the names of the tools, which Dot does and the kids do. He might be great in the kitchen, but he doesn’t know everything, just like all of us are. So I think he’s gonna be very relatable, very engaging, very warm, and I think people are just gonna love him.

JM: Has it always been your passion to go after unique stories, interesting angles that really haven’t been done before?

DM: I love to look at stories as a way to talk about, as you say, things that haven’t been done before and to shed new light on a story we think we’ve known before. But the biggest thing for me and why I really love working on “Weather Hunters” is that I know the impact that this is gonna have on millions and millions of kids who are going to see this show and get excited about weather — about looking at the world around them with fresh eyes and about interacting with their own family. So I love finding those things that are gonna have the greatest impact that someone’s gonna watch and take away more than just a nice story, but take away something that is meaningful and resonates with them long after they’ve turned off the screen.