Retiring WGN-TV meteorologist Tom Skilling delivered his final weather report Wednesday night, and the forecast was unseasonably warm and fuzzy.
After violent storms turned summer back into winter Tuesday night, temperatures are expected to climb back into the 70s this weekend. But Skilling, long the face of Chicago weather, will not be back on the air to tell us about it.
Joined by colleagues past and present, Skilling’s poignant farewell broadcast took over the entire 10 p.m. news, with recollections and video highlights from his nearly half century at the station.
“What’s especially amazing about WGN is the bond between this television station and you, our viewers,” Skilling said in his sign-off address Wednesday. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart, because in this line of work, if no one watches us, we don’t have a job. So thank you for 45 extraordinary and loyal years of viewership.”
While the finale was a nostalgic celebration of a remarkable career, the penultimate weathercast Tuesday was classic Skilling. After near-record highs during the day, an arctic cold front swept into Chicago, bringing with it golf ball-sized hail, thunderstorms and 11 tornado touchdowns, along with a 50-degree temperature plunge.
The extreme weather event — including the rare February tornadoes — preempted WGN’s prime time programming Tuesday evening, giving Skilling hours to monitor the storm in real time on weather maps packed with lightning bolts, isobars and a swirling red wall of precipitation.
“When we get into this northwest flow, it’s ‘Katy, bar the door,’ Skilling explained, using one of his favorite folksy phrases. “It’s going to get cold, and fast.”
Skilling had plenty of help Tuesday night from Demetrius Ivory, 48, a 10-year veteran of the station and his successor as chief meteorologist. Other Chicago TV stations also broke away from regular programming to report on the extreme weather.
But it was a fitting coda for Skilling, 72, who kept calm and carried on tirelessly for hours, as viewers huddled in their basements and rode out one last storm with Chicago’s longest-tenured TV weathercaster.
WGN found time to celebrate their retiring star Tuesday, presenting him with an official Skilling bobblehead during the 5 p.m. news, and playing a video tribute from Oprah Winfrey after the 9 p.m. weathercast.
But Wednesday night, the news was all about honoring Skilling, with friends, family and WGN alumni packing the studio to pay tribute to their former colleague.
Most gathered in the renamed WGN Tom Skilling Weather Center, where its namesake logged long hours every day gathering data and refining his forecasts.
“This weather office has never had so many souls in it at one time,” Skilling said, as he was feted with a weather cake adorned with colorful isotherms.
The in-studio cheering section included former WGN mainstays such as anchors Steve Sanders and Mark Suppelsa, and sportscaster Dan Roan, all of whom retired from the daily TV news grind ahead of Skilling.
Roan offered absolution for Skilling’s notoriously detailed and sometimes lengthy weathercasts.
“When sports was on after weather, and for all those times you ate into my time…you’re forgiven,” Roan joked.
Skilling paid tribute to Chicago TV weathercasters who preceded him, including Harry Volkman, John Coleman, John Coughlin, Jerry Taft and P.J. Hoff. His own career is already the stuff of broadcasting legend.
Growing up in west suburban Aurora, Skilling hit the local airwaves as a 14-year-old weathercaster on radio station WKKD, adding a local Aurora TV station to his resume while still in high school.
After graduating from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Skilling built a following in Milwaukee at WITI-TV, where he was paired with the station’s longtime weather sidekick, a wisecracking puppet named Albert the Alley Cat.
On Aug. 13, 1978, he joined WGN as a solo act, and became a Chicago broadcasting institution for nearly half a century.
As to the final forecast itself, Skilling called for mostly sunny skies and a high of 49 degrees, warming up to 73 by Sunday.
rchannick@chicagotribune.com
