Longtime WGN meteorologist Tom Skilling will retire next year after 45 years at the Chicago station. His last day on air will be February 28, 2024.
“There’s no formula for this. I am going to retire at the end of February after a marvelous 45 years at this incredible television station,” Skilling told viewers on the WGN Evening News on Thursday. “We all get to a point where we have to make a decision. ‘Is it time to retire. It’s the toughest decision.”
Skilling started his career at the age of 14 in Aurora, Illinois while still in high school. He had a series of radio and TV jobs in Illinois and Wisconsin before joining WGN in August of 1978.
The station said he is known for his “in-depth and highly detailed weather segments, Tom has elevated the audience’s understanding of not just the weather, but the science behind it.”
“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.”