And his fame goes far beyond forecasts. You run into multiple Denis Phillips every Halloween. Earlier this year, there was a one-man show about him at Tampa Fringe.
And on Friday, Phillips will be a guest of honor at Amalie Arena, where he’ll broadcast and bring along Crooked Thumb Brewery’s “Rule #7” beer named after him.
Maybe that’s because Phillips’ favorite role isn’t on TV—its at home. In a recent conversation with Creative Loafing Tampa Bay, one phrase kept coming up: “My family is everything to me.”
With six children from ages 11- 31, Phillips and his wife Robyn have created a literal minivan family. ”We’re a huge road trip family. We had a roller coaster road trip where we went to six or seven different amusement parks all the way up from Georgia to New Jersey, and the minivan gets trashed during these trips,” Phillips said about a recent trip out of the Sunshine State.
With only two kids left at home, Robyn thinks it may be time to retire the family’s beloved ride. “My wife has been very adamant of late. She’s like, ‘Okay, can we trade this in? It’s about time,’” Phillips said.
On his days off, Phillips prioritizes family time— hanging with his kids and wife—but when he’s working, his warm connection with the people on the other side of the screen make viewers feel like family, too.
Before his suspender shtick became local legend, Phillips only owned one pair. But during a 36-hour shift covering hurricane Charley in 2004, he happened to be wearing them on-air. Once the hurricane passed, viewers weren’t just talking about the storm— they were talking about “the guy in the suspenders.” From that moment on, they became his trademark.
Asked about wearing suspenders outside of work, Phillips giggled and said “No. Never.”
Wearing suspenders isn’t his only superpower. In the completely real sport of drinking diet Dr.Pepper, he’s got the gold medal. Once his viewers figured that out, they began supporting his habit by delivering cases to his doorstep.
“Our ring doorbell goes off two or three times a week, at three or four in the morning, and of course, my wife is like ‘Oh my God. What’s that?’ And it’s somebody dropping off Diet Dr. Pepper,” he said. It’s a sweet token of appreciation for what he does, and now he has a tower of Diet Dr.Pepper in his house “literally, 10 feet high.”
Long before the Dr.Pepper castle and the signature beer, Phillips was just a guy who loved baseball. The longtime Rays fan and former college baseball player has thrown out the first pitch a couple of times. Now, he gets to share some of that limelight with his family.
His 11-year-old daughter, Ryan “loves the spotlight”, and will be singing the national anthem at an upcoming Threshers game. On the other hand, son Jake, a junior in high school, is more reserved. “He’s shy, really, so he feels a little more uncomfortable. But overall, look—people are always nice when they come up,” dad explained.
Phillips’ meteorology career started much earlier than most.
He was just a kid when he saw Santa on the radar and from that moment on, he was hooked. During a tri-state 1974 tornado outbreak (when over 148 tornadoes caused the most violent tornado outbreak ever recorded), Phillips lived in Michigan which was one of the areas that was hit. From that point on, he always dreamed of chasing tornadoes, but ended up chasing hurricanes instead.
You won’t find Phillips strapped to a tree or standing in hurricane winds, however, because he spends most of his time on the clock in the newsroom. Since graduating from Penn State in 1985, his style of meteorology has changed greatly, and while accuracy remains a priority, his real focus is building trust.
“When I was young, all I cared about was getting the weather right. But as I got older, I realized it’s not just about accuracy—people need to trust you,” he said. “And that trust comes from going through it with them and showing empathy for what they’re experiencing.” “As I got older, I realized it’s not just about accuracy—people need to trust you.”
“Only one time in my 31 years here have I guaranteed a forecast that went wrong. It was Halloween night back in 1995. I went on the air and I guaranteed that it would not rain on Halloween, and it rained. I was devastated,” Phillips said. “I mean, it’s 30 years later, and it still haunts me.”
That hasn’t stopped him from being a larger-than-life, almost omnipresent, figure watching over the Bay area.
With a large family of his own, he doesn’t just forecast for the public, but he’s also making decisions to keep his loved ones safe.
“What I try to do is I try to take people by the hand and get them through a stressful situation,” Denis said. “Last year with Milton, I had two hotel reservations. I had one in Jacksonville and I had one in Naples for my family. So if the storm is a day or two out, and I realized the storm is going to go north, I sent them south, and if the storm is going to go south, I sent them north.”
If you know Denis Phillips then you know Rule #7: “Don’t freak out unless I’m freaking out.” While this list of rules was initially intended for hurricane Isaac, the seventh rule has stuck around and become something that locals abide by—so much so that Amalie Arena will soon be selling Rule 7 merch.
Phillips describes himself as a “pretty even-keeled guy” who doesn’t get scared by much, but there have been a select few times when hurricanes had him on edge.
“Hurricane Irma was coming and I went into the newsroom, and there were some people who were crying in the newsroom because they truly thought it was our storm,” Phillips said. “For me, Hurricane Charley, six hours before landfall, they still had a track right over us. I thought that was our storm, I really did. I wasn’t freaking out, but it got real.”
With hurricane season in full swing, locals, and Phillips, are reminded of the damage from the one-two punch Hurricanes Helene and Milton brought last fall. “I think last year was the first year that a lot of folks really experienced what a storm can do,” he said.
Phillips recalled driving up and down U.S. Highway Alt-19 and seeing a “war zone” with over homes damaged by the back-to-back storms. “I had never seen anything like it,” he added. Last year’s chilling hurricane season has left many weary of what storms this year will bring, but Phillips says it’s unlikely for something of that magnitude to happen again.
“The odds of our area being hit directly by a hurricane is lower than the odds of the Panhandle being hit or the northern Gulf Coast for a lot of reasons. So last year, everything kind of came together in the worst case scenario to give us two significant hurricanes,” he explained.
That’s comforting news from a guy who isn’t going anywhere. The 62-year-old is the Bay Area’s go-to guy for hurricane coverage, and has no plans to slow down.
“I never have plans on retiring,” Phillips said. “I would not be shocked if the day I dropped dead, I worked that day.”
Tickets for Bolts Brew Fest at Tampa’s Amalie Arena on Friday, Aug. 1 are still available and start at $52. Readers are invited to submit their own events to Creative Loafing Tampa Bay’s things to do calendar.
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This article appears in Jul 24-30, 2025.