Good news for New Yorkers: Veteran weather anchor Sam Champion is heading back to WABC Channel 7 to join the station’s weekday morning and noon teams as weather anchor.
Starting Monday June 3, Champion joins Ken Rosato, Shirleen Allicot and traffic reporter Heather O’Rourke on Eyewitness News This Morning from 4:30-7:00 a.m.
He will also be on Eyewitness News at noon with David Novarro and Shirleen Allicot.
Champion will round out the Eyewitness News AccuWeather team led by chief meteorologist Lee Goldberg, along with Amy Freeze and Jeff Smith. He will continue to contribute to ABC News programming.
“Sam has a fascination and passion for weather that is absolutely contagious,”WABC president and general manager Debra O’Connell said in a statement. “I am thrilled to have Sam join our outstanding Eyewitness News team, bringing with him a tremendous track record for accuracy in weather forecasting along with his genuine care for our tri-state area communities and viewers.”
This is a homecoming for one of TV’s most popular on-camera meteorologists.
Champion spent 18 years on WABC’s Eyewitness News (1988-2006), before joining GMA and ABC News.
Champion traveled to Paris in 2007 for the release of a groundbreaking report on global warming by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In August 2009, he anchored his first 20/20 special, Blown Away: Twisted Terror, which chronicled the tornado that devastated Parkersburg, Iowa, in 2008.
From 2013-2016, Champion was managing editor of The Weather Channel, where he first hosted a morning show and later a prime time show.
Champion had bounced back and forth since 2016.
He reported on the 2017 hurricane season for NBC News and MSNBC, and had a stint as Good Morning America Weekend weather anchor back in January 2018, when Ginger Zee was out on maternity leave.
Champion is thrilled to be back at ABC 7, saying “It is an extraordinary opportunity to come home and, once again, be a part of the Eyewitness News family. I have felt the trust and kindness of New York and the tri-state viewers since 1988, and I can’t wait to start our days together again at the No. 1 station in the nation!”