Tom Skilling, dean of Chicago TV weathercasters, stepping down
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Tom Skilling, the longtime WGN-TV chief meteorologist, announced his retirement Thursday during the evening news.
An always sunny presence, whatever the weather in Chicago, Skilling delivered a stormy fall forecast and then hit loyal viewers with the news that he’s reaching the end of a prodigious weathercasting career.
“I’ve watched people do this before and there’s no formula for this,” Skilling said. “I’m going to retire at the end of February, after a marvelous 45 years at this incredible television station.”
Skilling, 71, who started at WGN-Ch. 9 on Aug. 13, 1978, has been a familiar and congenial presence on the Chicago airwaves for decades, expertly and calmly navigating the city’s often unpredictable weather situations for generations of TV viewers.
On Thursday, he discussed the decision with a montage of clips tracing his career in the background, from a fresh-faced and hirsute rookie weatherman delivering a forecast in a Channel 9 blazer to a beloved personality hamming it up with Bozo, the station’s longtime star clown.
“It’s been a great career,” Skilling said.
An expert meteorologist, Skilling brought both authority and amiability to his forecasts, explaining the science behind the weather with graphics, details and a genuine enthusiasm.
After a Skilling forecast, viewers not only knew when they needed a raincoat, but why.
“There was a time when weather forecasting was seen as a not-serious profession,” WGN-TV News Director Dominick Stasi said in a news release. “But Tom has taken it to a much higher level. He carefully explains complex meteorological concepts in layman’s terms, supported by graphics often featuring isobars and upper-airs charts. Nobody was doing that when he started.”
An Aurora native, Skilling started his broadcasting career as a 14-year-old high school student at WKKD Radio in his hometown. He studied meteorology and journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison while continuing to work in radio and television. After stops in Madison and Milwaukee, where he was a meteorologist at WITI-TV, he landed at WGN, where Skilling became synonymous with Chicago weather for more than four decades.
Over the years, he has covered every major weather event to hit the Chicago area, from the 1990 Plainfield tornado to the Groundhog Day blizzard of 2011.
Skilling also went on location to distant climes such as Alaska, Las Vegas and an icebreaking ship in Lake Huron. He even outran a tornado in Oklahoma.
“You name it, he’s covered it,” Stasi said.
In addition to his TV duties, Skilling hosted nearly 40 years of severe weather seminars at Fermilab in Batavia.
Skilling also became a fixture on the Chicago Tribune’s weather page in 1997, explaining daily forecasts to readers for more than 25 years.
“Tom Skilling is a Chicago institution,” Paul Rennie, WGN-TV vice president and general manager, said in the news release. “There isn’t another meteorologist in the history of the city, or the country for that matter, who has been more impactful doing what he does.”
Thanking viewers and colleagues on Thursday’s broadcast, Skilling said knowing when to retire was among the toughest decisions he had to make.
Thursday, however, was far from his last forecast on WGN — he will be on the air through much of the long Chicago winter until the end of February, giving him and viewers the opportunity for a very long goodbye.
Come March, Skilling will join the ranks of notable former Chicago TV weathercasters such as Harry Volkman, Jim Tilmon and John Coleman. For many viewers, Skilling will be at the top of that list.
Skilling said he wants to do some traveling and he plans to remain in Chicago after retirement. Beyond that, his future remains up in the air.
“I don’t know what I’m going to be doing when I get done with this except I won’t have deadlines,” Skilling said.
