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Weird story. Melanie Patton Renfrew, a geography professor at Harbor College, has pleaded no contest to violating a judge's order to stop harassing KNBC weather caster Fritz Coleman. That, as you might guess, is just the latest bend in a twisting saga. As Larry Altman tells it in the Daily Breeze, Renfrew admits to sending Fritz "a lot" of emails and letters trying to get him to stop referring to onshore and offshore winds, but denies she was excessive: "I did what I felt God was calling me to do." KNBC, however, sought and won an order telling Renfrew to stop contacting Coleman and to stay 100 feet away from him. She alleges he has her confused with someone else, but conceded she will leave him alone — though she continues to watch KNBC and to insist he has his winds wrong. She blogs her side, and says she is writing a book to be called "What It Took to Convince NBC the Winds are Coming From the West."
* Update: Renfrew has sent the Daily Breeze a long retort, which the paper posted. Excerpt: "I will never agree that I 'harassed' him, only that he perceived it that way. I was trying to make him laugh in a loving, sisterly way...I only conceded to an abbreviated plea on the 8th trip to the Burbank courthouse because I was diagnosed with a cancerous tumor, and do not have time to keep addressing this idiocy....I believe the whole thing is a huge gender crime against me."