Tom Skilling and the staff at the WGN Weather Center (Bill Snyder, Paul Dailey and Tom Valle) prepare forecasts and graphics for the Friday evening weather broadcast and tomorrow's Chicago Tribune weather report.
WGN-TV Chief Meteorologist Tom Skilling and the WGN Weather Center staff provide daily coverage of weather in the Chicago area.
PHOTO ALBUM: January 2005 Archives
Keenan Smith preparing to go on air Friday on CLTV
WGN Weather Center's very own weather producer Bill Snyder is ready for the storm! Bill purchased a monster snow blower this week that is sure to gobble up the snow. This photo of his snow blower was sent to us via Bill's new wireless picture phone.
I wanted to share with you my early January on-air weather chat with
Alaska's beloved Mike Porcaro (pictured here on the left) and his ace
engineer and always friendly sidekick Doug McCullough (on the far
right). Mike's popular KENI afternoon drive time radio program out of
Anchorage is an Alaskan favorite each afternoon and evening from 4 to 6
P.M. on the Clear Channel news/talk radio station which unabashedly dubs
itself the 50,000 watt "Blowtorch". (Mike kids that the station's signal
is so powerful that it has toothbrushes glowing in Siberia--just across
the Bering Sea from our Great 49th State!)
I first visited with Mike last January as my producer Pam Grimes,
videographer Kevin Myers and I began filming our recently re-aired
weather special, "Alaska: Where Winters are Really Winters" last
January. (Many thanks to all who e-mailed to let us know they watched
the program!!!) Preparing that show allowed each of us rare insights
Alaska's fascinating but challenging winters and of the passion Alaska's
residents hold for that season and its uniquely awesome beauty. Mike
had gotten wind of our visit and extended me an invitation to talk about
it on his program, opening the phone lines to the many WGN-TV viewers
and Midwest transplants who now call Alaska home and still watch WGN-TV
on cable. What a great time I had with Mike and his listeners!
Mike is the former Executive Director of the Alaska Public
Broadcasting Commission--responsible in many ways years ago for bringing
television to a state so vast it covers an area equivalent to 20% the
land mass of the Lower 48 (no easy task, as you can imagine) has called
Alaska home for 30 years and began his broadcast career in the Rockford,
Illinois market. His advertising and public relations firm, Porcaro
Communications, is an institution in Alaska and western Canada!
-Tom Skilling
