Dozens of meteorologists end up wearing same dress on TV thanks to Facebook tip

Have you ever arrived at work to find a colleague wearing something almost spooky-similar to your own outfit?

Multiply the embarrassment, hilarity, confusion or joy of that moment by at least 50 times, put it on TV, and you may just be able to put yourself in the shoes of America's female meteorologists right now.

Heck, if you have $29.99 US and an Amazon account, you can put yourself in their dress too.

The stretch tunic pictured above has been purchased and worn by dozens of weather presenters across the U.S. in recent months, potentially leading anyone who watches multiple daily local forecasts to wonder if meteorology is becoming a uniformed profession.

To the best of our knowledge, it's not. 

What we do know, thanks to some of the people who wore this dress on-air, is that women who are broadcast meteorologists have a secret Facebook group in which they discuss work clothes (among other things, one would assume.)

KDFW FOX 4 meteorologist Jennifer Myers of Dallas, Texas, revealed on Facebook late last week that more than 50 different weather presenters had purchased the dress from Amazon after a link to it was shared among members of the group.

"I bought today's dress on Amazon for $23!" she wrote in a status update on her public fan page Saturday. "Someone posted a link to it on our broadcast meteorologist group Facebook page and it got REALLY popular."

Myers shared a collage that showed dozens of women in her industry wearing the dress in various colours — with the exception of green, naturally.

A copy of that collage was uploaded to Imgur by Myers that same day and has since been viewed nearly five million times.

"I had to laugh," wrote one commenter on the photo sharing site. "The female meteorologist where I live was wearing the the same red dress today."

"All three of the major news stations in my market are represented," wrote another. "Fantastic."

More women who purchased the dress for work have come forward in recent days to explain why so many broadcast meteorologists were enticed to purchase it.

"Someone stumbled onto 'the dress' and a few of us ordered it and shared pics of it on air in our group," said Shelby Hays, a meteorologist for KOCO in Oklahoma, to Tech Insider. "Everyone saw how great it looked ... At $23 we could buy a handful of these dresses for what we normally pay for just one."

Lyndsay Tapases of WBTV in Charlotte, N.C., told Buzzfeed similarly that the price was "a major selling point."

"Many of us don't have a clothing allowance and are responsible for buying all of our own clothes," she explained. "Each time someone new [in the Facebook group] got it in, we just kept confirming how great of a buy it was."

As word of the dress situation spreads, many people are flocking to the Amazon page where the dress is available for sale to leave funny reviews.

"I'm a large-set male and this dress helped me transition into the beautiful weather woman I always knew I could be," wrote an Amazon user named Justin. "A little tight around the waist, but nothing a three-week fad diet couldn't fix. It's true, this dress can flatter anyone!"

The viral web's obsession with this dress has surely come as a bonus for Amazon.

Most of the women have managed, so far, to dodge the one question that keeps coming up on Reddit about the dress: The question of the Facebook group's URL, and how one can access it.

Myers, herself an active Redditor, has been providing insightful responses to queries about her career and wardrobe choices in the comments section of her original Reddit post since it went viral. 

She had this to say about how curious netizens can access the "secret" Facebook group.

"It's private and only for female meteorologists. Sorry."