'A Chicago institution': Tom Skilling announces plans to retire in '24
Tom Skilling, who for 45 years has brought television viewers the ups and downs of Chicago weather with an infectious charm and unbridled passion for meteorology, will retire early next year, he announced Thursday.
“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 in Thursday's announcement. “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.”
His last broadcast is set for Feb. 28, 2024, according to WGN-TV.
Skilling was born in Pittsburgh, but his family later moved to Aurora, and he graduated from West Aurora High School. His earliest forecasts were given as a 14-year-old at WKKD radio in Aurora.
He later studied meteorology and journalism at the University of Wisconsin and held a series of radio and TV jobs in Illinois and Wisconsin before joining WGN-TV in August 1978.
“There was a time when weather forecasting was seen as a not-serious profession,” WGN-TV News Director Dominick Stasi said in Thursday's announcement. “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. Bottom line, he has always treated the audience with respect.”
In addition to his television work, Skilling has hosted severe weather seminars at Fermilab in Batavia for nearly 40 years.
“Tom Skilling is a Chicago institution,” Paul Rennie, WGN-TV vice president and general manager, said in the announcement. “There isn't another meteorologist in history of the city, or the country for that matter, who has been more impactful doing what he does.”
Over his career, Skilling won multiple Emmy Awards from the Chicago/Midwest chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and was presented with the Illinois Broadcasters Association's “Broadcast Pioneer” award in 2018. In recent years, he has led talks and participated in conferences across the country addressing climate change.
“A colleague of mine once said 'Chicago is like Broadway for weather people,' Skilling said Thursday. “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.”