If a polar vortex stopped in to Walgreens and bought a thank-you card for WGN-TV meteorologist Tom Skilling ahead of his career-ending signoff on Wednesday and had all of the other Chicago weather phenomena sign it, it might read: Thank you, Tom, for explaining who we are and where we’re coming from.
In the nearly 46 years since his first forecast for WGN in 1978, Skilling, has, in his folksy way, simply and clearly explained the science behind the weather while coming to be viewed as a Chicago treasure with little parallel.
Since the October announcement of his retirement, Skilling says letters and emails have been pouring in.
“It’s lovely,” Skilling says in an interview at his Edgewater condo overlooking Lake Michigan as his little white dog Penny and his black-and-white cat Waldo stopped by for scratches. “It seems like what I did meant something to people. And there’s something kind of marvelous about that. And I can’t get over the fact people so generously share that with me. It’s very moving.”
The late meteorologist John Coleman — a mentor who was known for his work at WLS-Channel 7 in its “happy talk” days and went on to found The Weather Channel — once told a young Skilling: “You’ve got to have a schtick.”
“I thought: ‘Oooh, I’m not funny, I’m not much of a showman. What’s my schtick going to be?’ ” Skilling says. “And I always worried about that. Well, it turns out, I guess, in retrospect, my schtick is that I dug into the science of weather. And, I’ll tell ya, it used to scare the devil out of the news consultants. They’d look at you grimly and say, ‘jetstream, dew point?’ Nobody knows what that is. All they want to know is: Is it going to rain tomorrow?’”
A weatherman is born ...
Skilling was born in Pittsburgh and grew up in New Jersey, where he loved watching the ocean and studying whatever weather maps he could get his hands on. He was in seventh grade when his father, an industrial valve salesman, got a new job, and his family moved to Aurora.
At 14, Skilling sent an eight-page letter to local radio station WKKD, saying he could do a better forecast for Aurora than the one that people at the station were using from Chicago 40 miles away, if only he could get his hands on decent weather maps.
“The program director there, Rusty Tym, thought it would be interesting to have a 14-year-old on this little, local radio station doing the weather,” Skilling says with a laugh.
So the teenage Skilling, accompanied by Tym, walked in to the offices of the National Weather Service and struck a deal: For the price of providing pre-stamped and addressed envelopes, Skilling would be sent surface maps and upper air charts.
He’d do his radio forecasts before heading to class at West Aurora High School. He did this for three years before heading to the University of Wisconsin, where he studied meteorology and journalism.
He soon found work at television stations in Jacksonville and Milwaukee before beginning at WGN.
“This has been a passion of mine since I was kid and I don’t know where it came from. Nobody in the family is into this,” he says.
“I had a psychic tell me once I was a ship captain in a previous life. I don’t know if I buy into that or not, but my parents could never quite figure out how they got this kid who was into this weather like this. It’s kind of crazy. They would have preferred a doctor or a lawyer, something with better job security.”
Weather memories ...
In 2010, Skilling was on storm-chasing assignment in Northeast Oklahoma when everyone in the SUV he was traveling in suddenly became aware that a tornado had formed behind them and was on their tail.
Skilling and other members of the team hung their heads out the window for a better look when his producer producer Pam Grimes yelled “Get in! You’re gonna get decapitated,” Skilling recalled.
“We were hemmed in by cars on either side and if any of them had stepped on the brakes we all would have been decapitated. And there was a satellite truck behind us, and I’m thinking, ‘My God, our people in the satellite truck are going to go airborne any moment.’ This thing was gaining on us.”
The tornado petered out in a field.
“I’d never seen one before. I’d cleared 15,000 tornado warnings from a windowless weather office using radar and remote sensing, but I’d never actually seen one,” he says. “I was screaming and shrieking. It’s like a Steven Spielberg film playing out in front of you or something like that.”
Skilling says of the deadly Plainfield tornado of 1990 that struck without proper warning and killed 29 people: “We in the profession were always incredibly sad about that. We felt we had failed.”
One positive result was the drive to install a new radar system that would help provide early warning.
He shares another fond memory, of fielding a phone call years ago from the general manager of the White Sox who asked Skilling to put a rosy spin on an opening day weather forecast that called for rain and sub-40 degree temps.
Any dilemma he had about how to handle the situation was shortlived.
“I went on the air and told them what I thought was going to happen. I wasn’t going to misinform my audience,” he says.
On the deadly heat wave of 1995: “We didn’t know the point at which people died... the whole profession, we had no idea,” he says, pointing to how followup studies produced metrics that can be used as warning signs.
Crying out loud ...
Maybe the most unforgettable Skilling moment occurred in 2017, on a campground 15 miles south of Carbondale, when he was overcome by tearful emotion as a solar eclipse turned day into night.
“I was on the air, and you’re watching, in the middle of the day, daytime turn to night. The stars come out, and, I’m telling you, that has an effect on you that I never expected. I lost it on the air, and I was so embarrassed,” says Skilling, equating the moment to a religious experience.
“Afterward, people would bring it up and I’d apologize and say ‘I’m so embarrassed, that was not professional,’ and they said ‘Oh, no. We cried with you.’”
Skilling says it’s not unusual in his off-air life to find himself with a tear in his eye.
“I cry about a lot of things. I cry listening to songs sometimes. Every time I hear James Taylor sing ‘Fire and Rain’ I think about the tragic love story behind that,” says Skilling, going on to recall the tale and having to pause for a moment while doing so. “I get emotional about stuff like that.”
‘Uncharted territory’ ...
Skilling says he is excited, if a tad uneasy, about retirement.
Days after he signs off, Skilling plans to spend three weeks in Hawaii, where he has a place.
“I’m looking forward to the ability to sit down and read books while I listen to the waves crashing, and it’s quiet. It’s such a quiet environment,” he says.
But quiet moments, like on the ride on home after his final sign off, also come to mind.
“I sometimes worry about it. I’m in uncharted territory,” he says. “I think that people may not totally understand this devotion to weather. You know, I never married; this has been my life, and I don’t regret it. They often tell you that you shouldn’t let your work be your life, but it has been, and it’s been pretty amazing.”
The decision to walk away wasn’t easy.
But Skilling, who turned 72 this month, has suffered a few spells of vertigo recently that he ties to the stress of deadlines and fighting traffic on his 45-minute commute.
“I thought: This is my body saying maybe it’s time to slow down a bit.”
Earlier this month Skilling took part in the Groundhog Day festivities in north suburban Woodstock (his first time at the event), where the movie “Groundhog Day” — starring Bill Murray — was filmed.
Skilling actually met Murray days later at a celebration of the movie and its late director, Harold Ramis, at Harry Caray’s on Navy Pier.
“I don’t think we’re going to have weather anymore,” a deadpan Murray said of Skilling’s retirement at the event. “I don’t see the point. I don’t see the point of looking out the window anymore.”
The next chapter ...
Skilling won’t be sitting down at his computer at 8 a.m., poring over weather data at his home office before making the afternoon journey into WGN for forecasting duties that keep him busy until 11 p.m.
But he’s not stepping out of the game completely.
“There may be a situation where I continue to do some work with the station,” he said. “There’s talk about being brought in as another voice on some severe weather coverage.”
There are also plans for Skilling to cover the upcoming April eclipse.
“I told them ‘Don’t expect me to cry again. . .that would look pre-cooked.’ But I don’t know how I’ll react to it. I mean, that was just a reaction that came out of the blue on the last one, so I’m a little nervous about doing this because maybe they think I’m going to cry again or something.”
Skilling also hopes to work on several feature stories for WGN involving weather and climate change, like ones about the future of flying cars and electric aircraft.
He plans to take part in the ceremony to turn on Buckingham Fountain in May, and will remain active on his Facebook page, where he blogs, answers reader questions and keeps people informed about what he’s up to.
Skilling is confident he’s leaving his gig in good hands with fellow WGN weatherperson Demetrius Ivory taking over as chief meteorologist.
“I couldn’t be happier. He’s just a nice guy. And he takes the weather seriously. I think they made a perfect choice,” Skilling said.
