Matthew Cappucci

Hey gang! I’m one of the few people in the world that gets paid to do exactly what they love. I eat, sleep and breathe weather, and here at FOX 5 DC, I get a paycheck to share that passion with you.

I’ve been enthralled with weather for as long as I can remember. One of my first words was an attempt at saying "wind meter." At age 5, I was obsessed with waterspouts, and I bought a video camera to "storm chase" in my neighborhood at age 7. By third grade, I was delivering weather forecasts on the PA system at school, and I hopped in front of the green screen to do weather for public access in my hometown of Plymouth, Mass. in middle school.

In high school, I became involved with the American Meteorological Society and delivered my first presentation there in 2013 when I was fifteen years old. I headed to college in 2015, taking an unconventional course by going to Harvard, creating my own atmospheric sciences major by cross-enrolling at MIT. I also became a Coca-Cola scholar, a Henry David Thoreau Foundation scholar and a recipient of the 2015 AXA Insurance scholarship, as well as the Mike Wallace Scholarship; I am grateful for the entities that made my college education possible. While in school, I began working for The Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang as a freelancer.

I graduated in 2019 and headed to The Post full time, ecstatic to move to Washington D.C., a city I had always dreamed of calling home. I began delivering radio forecasts on WAMU, the local NPR affiliate, and working to build a following. Working in TV was what I was aiming toward but via a roundabout route.

While at The Post, I began covering U.S. weather stories for international outlets like BBC World News, DW News and CTV Canada, delivering enough live reports to cobble together a demo reel. All the while, I storm chased as often as I could, filming hits in front of tornadoes, in the eye of hurricanes and in the heart of blizzards.

My goals in doing weather are simple: to educate, inform and inspire. I firmly believe that viewers have an affinity for learning and a natural curiosity about what’s happening in the skies above their heads; education is empowering, and learning about the atmosphere helps connect us to the world around us.

FOX 5 DC brought me on board in June 2021. I was an unusual hire in all regards, but it was an opportunity I have waited for my entire life — I have never felt more at home than at this station. They took a chance on me. Now, I have made a name for myself as the geekiest of the weather team — the nerd of the nerds.

My first day on air featured live tornado coverage of a twister that moved into downtown D.C. Two months later, I tracked down a tornado in Annapolis, Maryland, filming reports and covering the storm live in Annapolis for ten hours straight. It may have been the first time a TV meteorologist on the East Coast has delivered a report from a tornado. (Serendipitously, my FOX5 headshot is from that day).

When I’m not living the dream at FOX 5, I can be found working for The Washington Post, WAMU or MyRadar, or working on the side as an educational consultant or teaching public speaking classes. I also continue delivering reports to international outlets during hurricane season. I can regularly be heard on KSRO in Santa Rosa, Calif., and on SiriusXM’s "Absolutely Mindy Show," a popular radio program for kids. My book "Looking Up," distributed by Simon and Schuster, will be released on August 2, 2022.

Outside of work, I spend my spare time storm chasing! My truck has a cage built around it to protect against softball-sized hail, and I’ve logged more than a dozen tornadoes so far. I am also an avid traveler and spend every hour I have working through my bucket list.

Life is short, and I want to see and do it all. Fortunately, I work a job that manages to make me happy each and every day. For every viewer, swipe or my key card and forecast I deliver, I am thankful.