Tom Skilling, a Chicago institution after 45 years as meteorologist at Nexstar-owned WGN-TV, said he will retire next year.
Skilling’s last broadcast will be February 24, he announced on the WGN Evening News Thursday.
Skilling is known for his in-depth and detailed reports on often unpredictable weather in the Windy City.
“A colleague of mine once said ‘Chicago is like Broadway for weather people,’" Skilling said in a release from WGN. “And I couldn’t agree more. From Lake Michigan to the storms that roll in from the plains to tremendous heat to gobs of snow, if you want a variety of weather to forecast, it makes the job awfully interesting. And you know it’s also true in another fashion, and that’s ‘the show must go on.’ And the show will go on; I just won’t be in that starring role.”
Before joining WGN in 1978, Skilling had already started his career as a 14-year-old high school student at WKKD Aurora, Illinois. He then held a series of jobs on radio and TV in Illinois and Wisconsin.
“There was a time when weather forecasting was seen as a not-serious profession,” WGN news director Dominick Stasi said. “But Tom has taken it to a much higher level. He carefully explains complex meteorological concepts in layman’s terms, support by graphics often featuring isobars and upper-airs charts. Nobody was doing that when he started. Bottom line, he has always treated the audience with respect.”
Over the course of his career, he covered the brutal Chicago winters of the ‘80s, the Plainfield tornado, the 1995 heat wave and the Groundhog Day Blizzard of 2011.
"You name it, he’s covered it,” Stasi said.
Skilling also reported firsthand on the weather from locations ranging from Alaska to Las Vegas, an ice-breaking ship in the middle of Lake Huron, and was chased by a tornado in Oklahoma.
“If you had told young Tom Skilling that he would go on to have a career in weather spanning seven decades, working in Chicago, with some truly wonderful people, I think he would be overjoyed,” Skilling said. "And that’s how I feel today. Overjoyed at the colleagues I’ve worked with, the viewers I’ve met, the stories I’ve covered. Overjoyed and grateful. I wouldn’t trade a single minute of it for anything.”
