Meteorologist accuses Erin Andrews of "making up weather alerts" during Packers-Lions game - "This makes me irrationally angry"
Erin Andrews has been one of the most prominent sideline reporters in recent NFL history, having been a staple of Fox's broadcasts since 2014. But a recent controversy has threatened to bring her image into disrepute.
During Sunday's divisional game between the Green Bay Packers and the Detroit Lions, outrage emerged over her purportedly poor description of the weather conditions at Lambeau Field. In this instance, she predicted 43-mph winds along with thunder and lightning, both of which did not happen despite the stormy nature of the game.
A pair of those angry comments came from Sam Kuffel, meteorologist for CBS's Milwaukee-area affiliate WDJT-TV:
"Begging Erin Andrews to stop making up weather alerts."
"Stuff like this makes me irrationally angry."
Packers-Lions "weather reports" not Erin Andrews' first controversy
As it turns out, this is not the first time Erin Andrews has faced backlash. In 2022, she and Charissa Thompson admitted to fabricating information for their mid-game updates in an episode of their podcast Calm Down. Thompson said:
“I was like, ‘Oh coach, what adjustments are you gonna make at halftime?’ He goes, ‘That’s a great perfume you’re wearing.’ I was like ‘Oh f–k, this isn’t gonna work.’ I’m not kidding, I made up a report.”
After Thompson gave her example, Andrews added:
“I’ve done that too. For a coach that I didn’t wanna throw under the bus because he was telling me all the wrong stuff.”
Over a year later, Thompson, who is also the host of Amazon Prime's NFL pre-game show in addition to her duties on Fox, would expound on the tactic when speaking to Pardon My Take:
“First of all no coach is going to get mad if I say, ‘Hey, we need to stop hurting ourselves, we need to be better on third down, we need to stop turning the ball over and do a better job of getting off the field.’ Like, they’re not going to correct me on that. So I’m like it’s fine, I’m just going to make up the report.”
The remarks sparked immediate online backlash, including from fellow sports reporters Laura Okmin and Tracy Wolfson. In response, she was forced to put out this apology post: