‘Doozy’ of a career: After nearly half a century on air, Tom Skilling nears his final forecast
CHICAGO — For many Chicago viewers, retiring WGN-TV meteorologist Tom Skilling has long been an eternally sunny on-air presence, whose detailed forecasts and genuine enthusiasm somehow made upper air patterns interesting.
The cult of Skilling runs so deep, just about everybody does an overly cheerful impression of Chicago’s longest-tenured weathercaster.
What they may miss, however, goes on behind the scenes, where Skilling is far more complex than his caricature: a diligent, almost obsessive meteorologist who spends 15 hours a day glued to computer screens, analyzing reams of data in an endless quest to accurately predict the Windy City’s capricious weather.
“You’ve been humbled enough by Mother Nature to know that you’re not going to get every one exactly right,” Skilling said. ”But you sure try. You live and die trying.”
Most of the time, Skilling got it right.
In late January 2011, for example, Skilling told viewers of a potentially “formidable” winter storm nearly a week in advance, tracking its formation every step of the way. When the Groundhog Day blizzard arrived, it dropped 21.2 inches between Jan. 31 and Feb. 2, the third biggest snowstorm in Chicago history.
“This is our storm,” Skilling announced matter-of-factly as furious snow totals piled up and paralyzed the city. “It is a doozy.”
Over the years, Skilling has delivered thousands of forecasts, from rain and lake-effect snow to the more arcane cyclonic vorticity, with expertise and a folksy warmth that has endeared him to generations of Chicagoans.
But if March comes in like a lion, for the first time in nearly half a century, Skilling will not be on the air to help viewers weather another storm. The once gee-whiz kid of Chicago meteorology, now the avuncular dean of local TV weathercasters, is retiring at the end of the month.
“In some respects, you look back on everything that’s happened
