WCCO Radio chief meteorologist Paul Douglas announces retirement

WCCO-AM chief meteorologist Paul Douglas has announced his retirement after more than 40 years of letting Minnesotans know if it'll be either ludicrously snowy or unbearably humid.

"I wanted to turn down the dial," Douglas, whose real last name is Kruhoeffer, said in his July 25 announcement on WCCO .

"I have one more weather tech company, my seventh and last that I'm involved with, called Praedictix based in Eden Prairie . So I want to be more involved in that, I want to spend more time with family and friends and traveling."

The Pennsylvania-born broadcaster, meteorologist, and entrepreneur arrived in Minnesota in 1983 — after broadcast jobs in Wilkes Barre/Scranton, Pa., and Stamford, Conn. — working for KARE 11 (then WTCN) with not just an eye on the sky, but on the future. WCCO Radio reports that he was just the second meteorologist in the country to use computer graphics for his daily forecasts.

While he's best known to Minnesotans for his weather reports, he wasn't only popping up on TV and radio. Douglas founded the software company EarthWatch in 1989. The company's three-dimensional weather graphics are still used by hundreds of stations in the U.S. and more than 20 other countries. That technology was also used in Jurassic Park and Twister .

He also wrote the book Caring for Creation: The Evangelical's Guide to Climate Change and a Healthy Environment with Reverend Mitch Hescox, an attempt to frame pollution and climate change in terms that might strike home with conservative and Evangelical readers.

While his career in meteorology took a brief detour to Chicago, he spent the bulk of his career in Minnesota between KARE 11, the Star Tribune , WCCO-TV , WCCO Radio, and the TPT Almanac. He also taught at St. Cloud State University , wrote books, and founded the weather technology company Digital Cyclone, Inc.

"You know, at some point you realize you have enough money, but you don't have enough time," Douglas told WCCO Radio Morning News host Vineeta Sawkar . "And I think as you get older, time becomes the important metric. I don't want to look back when I'm 85 or 90 say could have, should have, would have, you know? Dog gone it, why didn't I quit a little bit sooner?"

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