Today marks a milestone in podcasting.

The Kansas City Weather Podcast celebrates its fourth birthday today. With nearly daily episodes since its inception, it has more episodes produced (1325) than all but one podcast.*

This morning, I asked KC Weather Podcast creator Ed Roberts about starting his podcast’s fifth year.

It seems like a momentous occasion, a podcast going on continuously, for four years.

“The Kansas City Weather Podcast started on February 9th, 2005. It kind of caught me by surprise.,” Roberts laughed. “It’s hard to believe that I’ve been that long already.”

“In addition to the podcast, I often provide live coverage of severe weather [like today, interestingly enough] and other active weather events on my website.

What is the attraction of producing a daily podcast? And what do your listeners get that they don’t get from an old-media tv or radio forecast?

“While I give out a weather forecast, which has become somewhat of a commodity these days, I’ve been told that my personal insights, enthusiasm, availability, and honesty have continued to set me apart from Joe Forecaster here in town. While I’ve had offers to produce the podcast for other cities in the US, there’s something to be said about experiencing the weather right along with all your listeners.

And your podcast contributed to your decision to do another weather-related venture?

“Yes. Thanks in part to my visibility with the podcast, I launched a weather consulting company (LRC Weather) on November with 3 other weather folks in town, and it has been going very well.

You put out a weather podcast almost every day. Have you ever tallied up how much time you’ve spent?

“All totaled, I’ve probably put in around 4000 hours into the podcast over the years. That’s over 166 DAYS. Unreal… I really must be crazy.”

The KC Weather Podcast feed is here, and its Twitter feed is here.

*(KC Weather Podcast creator Ed Roberts informs me that 100 Word Stories has more episodes, but also had a 9-month head start.).