LOL, My ex-teacher violates a restraining order on local weatherman!

DaRizzle · Sep 3, 2009

LOLOLOL I had this nut job about 5 years ago

A Harbor College geography professor, who for two years barraged TV weatherman Fritz Coleman with e-mails contending his forecasts are inaccurate, has been convicted of violating a judge's order to stop harassing him.

Melanie Patton Renfrew, 54, who has taught at the Wilmington campus since 1997, pleaded no contest Aug. 7 in Burbank court to violating a restraining order Coleman had obtained to keep her from stalking him.

In an interview at her El Camino Village home, in an e-mail and in an entry on her own blog, Renfrew denied she is a stalker, saying she was trying to get the KNBC weatherman to change the terminology he uses to describe onshore and offshore winds to better inform the public.

She contends
Harbor College geography professor Melanie Patton Renfrew.
it is a science and health issue.

"I did what I felt God was calling me to do," she said in an interview. "I don't feel obsessive."

Renfrew, however, admitted to writing "a lot" of e-mails and letters to Coleman, and wrote on her blog that Coleman "has become the criminal against me because he refuses to apologize."

"Being a celebrity doesn't make you a private king where you can behead people who know directions," she wrote. "He, the `Science Editor,' and others at NBC care zero about the feelings of a scholar who tried to help them: `It's about the truth."'

Renfrew said she cares strongly about television forecasters who use the terms "onshore" and "offshore" to describe winds because they affect people's health. Offshore winds are those that blow out to sea; onshore are those that flow in from the ocean.

Renfrew said weather broadcasters don't recognize that viewers misunderstand the terms. She displayed for a reporter surveys she and her students have conducted that show a majority of people believe offshore winds come from offshore.

She said a better term for them would be "desert winds," an indication of where they originate from and that they are hot. Renfrew said she believes that many people who suffer from headaches and sinus problems are dehydrated, and the desert wind description would encourage them to drink more water.

"I get exhausted trying to explain to everyone how dry weather works, and thought it would save me energy if the public got it right from a TV source," Renfrew wrote.

Renfrew said she met Coleman at an American Meteorological Society conference in 2007. She began e-mailing him and sending letters, saying she was trying to be friendly and to make him laugh.

"I wanted him to get it right so when he eventually retires, it would be with joy," Renfrew wrote in her June blog entry. "Instead, he accused me of `harassment,' and began acting mentally disturbed on TV."

Renfrew said that the more she wrote Coleman, the more he said "offshore, never bothering to check that all along the coast, we were having onshore winds, even on the afternoons of Santa Ana days."

Renfrew said she wrote to others, including former KNBC-TV anchor Paul Moyer and medical reporter Dr. Bruce Hensel and received positive responses.

Renfrew said Coleman has possibly confused her with someone else. She said she approached him in person one other time at Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park, but it was a coincidence that they were there at the same time.

Burbank police Sgt. Robert Quesada said KNBC obtained a restraining order against Renfrew in March 2008 to "keep her away from Mr. Fritz Coleman."

The order includes e-mails, letters and phone calls.

"It's anything," Quesada said. "You have to stay away. You can't make any contact 100 feet of his work. She just has to knowingly stay away from him."

Coleman, who has worked at KNBC since 1982, and a Channel 4 spokesman did not respond to a request for an interview.

In his request for the judge's order, Coleman referred to Renfrew's behavior as "bizarre" and said he feared for his safety.

Renfrew called Coleman "delusional."

She admits she violated the restraining order by continuing to write to Coleman. Prosecutors charged her in March with violating the court order.

"If Mr. Coleman had listened back in 2007, and checked the `shore' records to see he had them opposite, there would be no need to write again," she said. "I kept trying different ways to explain it, the way I do for students, but he refused to try to understand."

Renfrew is not scheduled to be sentenced until August 2010. Burbank Assistant City Attorney Denny Wei said his office will dismiss the case against her if she leaves Coleman alone. If not, she could face six months in jail and a possible $1,000 fine.

Renfrew said she will not bother Coleman, who she continues to watch.

She maintains her overall innocence and is writing a book called, "What it Took to Convince NBC the Winds are Coming from the West."

Ken Clark, a meteorologist for AccuWeather, sided with Coleman, a comedian turned television weatherman. Clark provided weather information for Coleman's broadcasts for about 10 years.

"He doesn't do anything wrong," Clark said. "He is presenting the weather right when he talks about offshore flow and onshore flow."
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http://www.dailybreeze.com/ci_13257678?source=rv

barfo · Sep 3, 2009

The difference between onshore and offshore is critical to our understanding of the weather. She is a hero and should be recognized as such.

barfo

DaRizzle · Sep 3, 2009

lol, stfu

DaRizzle · Sep 3, 2009

im being a dick in the comments section...feels so invigorating

yakbladder · Sep 3, 2009

DaRizzle said: ↑

im being a dick in the comments section...feels so invigorating
Click to expand...

I believe that's how flashers get started...

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