The ‘Internet Weather Man’ Behind The Hurricane Ian Livestream With 100,000 Views

Topline

More than 100,000 people tuned in Wednesday to watch Ryan Hall—a YouTuber and weather analyst known by his online name “Ryan Hall Y’all”—livestream the latest news on Hurricane Ian as it bears down on Florida, and the former local TV employee and TikToker has drawn millions of viewers to his videos documenting extreme weather events like tornadoes, blizzards and hurricanes.

Debris litters a street in a neighborhood of St. Pete Beach as the winds from Hurricane Ian arrive.

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Key Facts

Hall has been livestreaming Hurricane Ian for nine hours on YouTube, frequently offering meteorological predictions and split screen footage and pictures of Florida, including from local storm chasers, as well as radar images as Ian hits the state.

The Kentucky native picked up tens of thousands of views on his weather videos within several months of launching his online accounts in 2021, and he now has 1.5 million followers on TikTok, 600,000 on YouTube and more than 100,000 combined on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Hall aims to deliver “weather-tainment,” he told Kentucky newspaper the Paintsville Herald in January, and he has analyzed dozens of extreme weather events over the past two years, including Hurricane Fiona, the summer 2022 heat waves and a January blizzard on the East Coast.

He has also chased storms across the U.S., including tornadoes, hurricanes and blizzards, telling the Paintsville Herald “there’s nothing I like more than being underneath a mesocyclone or near a violent storm.”

Hall did not respond to a request for comment from Forbes.

Crucial Quote

“If there’s a tornado outbreak going on in your neck of the woods, I try to become your local weatherman, but on YouTube,” Hall told the Paintsville Herald in January.

News Peg

Hurricane Ian made landfall on Wednesday around 3 p.m. ET as a Category 4 storm, bringing floodwaters, 12-foot storm surges and 150 mph sustained winds to Florida’s Gulf Coast and forcing 2.5 million residents to evacuate.

Big Number

639,000. That’s how many people subscribe to Hall’s YouTube channel. His most popular YouTube video from earlier this year tracking a storm across the Rocky Mountains has 1.1 million views.

Key Background

After becoming interested in weather as a child, Hall took classes in broadcast meteorology at Mississippi State University and worked for the weather center at WYMT, a local CBS affiliate in eastern Kentucky, he told the Paintsville Herald. After discovering he would rather work in the field than for television, the 28-year-old quit to pursue other ventures. His first weather video in January 2021 forecasted a major snowstorm in the central and southeastern United States. Several of Hall’s videos on TikTok analyzing and predicting Hurricane Ian’s path have drawn more than 12 million views combined. Hall told the Paintsville Herald earlier this year he was shocked by his rapid rise to internet fame, saying, “Never in a million years did I think it would blow up.” He said he initially created the posts to share videos for a “couple people,” including family across the country, who were interested in his weather predictions. The online weather commentary has since become his full-time job, he told the outlet.

Tangent

Hall has also pursued side ventures since his career in online weather commentary took off. He says he owns Hall Enterprises, LLC, a multimedia marketing and consulting company where he aims to help companies grow their business online, according to his website.