SPOKANE, Wash. — For the past 27 years, KREM 2 Chief Meteorologist Tom Sherry has dominated The Inlander’s Best of the Inland Northwest category for Best TV Weathercaster, winning first place every single year since 1995.
A start-up weekly newspaper that would later become widely known as The Inlander decided to add a “Best Of” readers poll to complement its mix of horoscopes, arts and entertainment coverage.
“Well, communities across the United States all were featuring this kind of “Best Of”; what are the best local businesses? What are the most entertaining local people?” General Manager and Co-owner of the Inlander Jer McGregor said. “And so when we started out in Spokane back in 1993, we wanted to get going here and launch the best of the Inland Northwest from the Inlander’s readers. And so that's how it began.”
Readers would weigh in on their favorite sandwich shop, bookstores and breakfast spots, as well as their favorite television personalities.
“Tom Sherry has won every year of the Inlanders readers’ poll, except the very first year,” McGregor said. “So, he is on what's known as a ‘hot streak.’”
In the 1995 poll, voters would overwhelmingly vote for Tom Sherry as the best TV weathercaster in the Inland Northwest, kickstarting his run that not even an NBA legend could touch.
“Tom Sherry's winning streak in the Inlander’s readers’ poll is unprecedented,” McGregor said. “Nobody has won more times or consecutive times than Tom Sherry. It'd be fair to say, as far as the Inlander’s readers’ poll goes, he's the GOAT.”
After Tom Sherry won Best TV Weathercaster ten times in a row, he was inducted into the Inlander Hall of Fame. At that point, he asked if the newspaper could stop asking readers who their favorite tv weathercaster is.
But the Inlander didn’t stop. Instead, Tom Sherry would go on to become a Spokane institution, like Auntie’s Bookstore and Domini’s Sandwiches, which have also won the last 27 years straight.
According to Tom, this is an honor he does not take lightly.
“I don’t have a lot of Emmy’s. I never enter those awards that are judged by people in the field. I really just want to be important and judged by the viewer. I just felt like that was the most important judge out there was the viewer, that they let you come into their house during special times- dinner time, bedtime, morning time - and they let you come into their home and really be part of their family,” he explained. “That means more to me than any of the other awards I’ve been allowed to have and the Inlander ones are, by far, the ones more important to me because it’s the viewer or the reader.”
A humbling honor for a man who, over three decades, has become a Spokane legend.