At first, Jim Cantore thought the question was a joke. Then he saw the blue checkmark verifying the Twitter account that sent it and realized the best baseball player in the world really did want to know everything he could about the size of the snowstorm headed for New Jersey.

“All of a sudden, I get this direct message from Mike Trout,” said Cantore, the Weather Channel’s voluble on-camera meteorologist and among the most trusted voices in forecasting today. “He’s asking me about the storm. Not like, ‘Hey, Jim, it’s Mike.’ He just went right into the details. He was genuinely curious about what the models said.”

View photos To put it simply, Mike Trout loves weather. (Getty) More

For all of Trout’s star power and the possibility of back-to-back American League MVP trophies, precious little is known about him away from the field. Which is why Cantore, a New York Yankees fan, was tickled to learn something that a few Internet sleuths later figured out.

Mike Trout is a weather geek. And if he weren’t patrolling center field for the Los Angeles Angels nightly, the 24-year-old figures he would be holed away in some corner of the northeast where snow falls during the winter delivering the daily weather report on local TV.

“I would love to try it,” Trout said.

Instead, Trout consumes weather information with a voraciousness that’s apparent to his Angels teammates. On his phone, he said, is a folder of apps called “Weather.” Trout scrolls through different models (Global Forecast System, European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, North American Ensemble Forecast System) and others that specify short-, medium- and long-range forecasting. If ever there’s a question about whether the Angels are going to play a particular game with gloomy skies above, they know whom to ask.

Garrett Richards saw Trout’s forecast-following prowess early in his career. The two roomed together in the minor leagues from 2009-11. At Double-A in Little Rock, Ark., they spent late nights grilling food and watching the rain.

“We’d have bad thunderstorms there,” Richards said. “He’d always be checking the radar. And we had a balcony at our apartment. He’d go out there and sit all night.”

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Trout’s weather obsession started in the same place as Cantore’s: a deep desire to avoid class and a common bond with dad. “I was young, and I always wanted to get off school,” Trout said. “So I’d ask, ‘When’s the snowstorm coming?’ I was the kid in class who would see snow out the window and start looking at it and want to play with it.” Trout said his father, Jeff, fostered his love for storms even more, and whether it was ski trips or just sitting atop a mountain and watching flakes fall, it mesmerized Trout.

Because he ended up in Los Angeles, Trout grew accustomed to its one season of perfect weather. He lives in Laguna Beach and has a private beach on which he drinks his coffee every morning. Life without snow, he admits, isn’t the worst thing in the world. Still, he can’t help but chase bad weather every now and again. Once during spring training, Trout noticed on a model that Flagstaff, Ariz., was going to get blanketed with snow. The Angels had a day off, so Trout drove the 2½ hours north to watch the storm.

View photos Weather Channel meteorologist Jim Cantore says he can see Mike Trout 'chasing tornadoes, standing in snowstorms.' (AP) More

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