Tom Skilling, a longtime Chicagoland meteorologist who recently announced his plans to retire, was honored by Illinois congressmen last week.
U.S. Reps. Bill Foster, D-Ill., and Mike Quigley, D-Ill., submitted a statement to the Congressional Record that honors Skilling’s four-and-a-half decades as a meteorologist in the Chicago area.
“As the longtime chief meteorologist for WGN-TV, Tom Skilling has been one of the most trusted figures on television screens throughout the Chicago area for decades, expertly and calmly explaining the region’s often unpredictable weather situations for generations of viewers,” the representatives wrote in the statement.
“Those of us who know Tom and have worked with him over the course of his career know how passionate he is about his work and how talented he is at communicating often complex scientific data to people of all ages and backgrounds. But his greatest strength is the kindness with which he treats everyone he interacts with; he is always ready to greet a fan with a warm smile and meaningful conversation.”
Skilling plans to retire in February 2024.
Skilling began his career at 14 when he joined WKKD, a now-defunct AM radio station in Aurora. He joined WGN in August 1978, and his last day will be Feb. 28, marking the end of a 46-year run at the station.
In his 50-year-plus career, he has flown into a Florida hurricane, had a puppet co-host on a Milwaukee television station and embraced legendary radio personality Steve Dahl’s playful mocking of Skilling as “Tommy Skillet-head.”
His career also overlapped with some groundbreaking advances in meteorology. He helped bring animated satellite imagery and radar on air to WGN. Before that, he animated his own weather maps, which took hours to create for a newscast.
“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 a statement.
“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.”
Contributing: Kade Heather
