Forecast calls for retirement with increasing chance of travel: WCCO's Paul Douglas ends incredible broadcasting career

When you turn on the radio, the television, open the newspaper in the Twin Cities and across Minnesota, weather is a destination. What's the high today? Do I need my big parka, or my little one? Is a white-knuckle drive ahead of me? Good lake weekend?

These are questions unique to Minnee-soh-tahns and there is one group of people in the state who know it all too well: Meteorologists. They become as important as that morning coffee or Roger Erickson's school closings .

We end another era at WCCO Radio this week as we bid goodbye to longtime host, broadcaster, and WCCO Meteorologist Paul Douglas who will be stepping away from the grind of daily weather-casting duties on the station. It comes after over 40 years of helping Minnesota figure out if it's cold or just a little nippy.

The decision came for Douglas as he looks toward his future.

"Yeah, I wanted to turn down the dial," explained Douglas. "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."

Those companies are numerous as Douglas mentioned. Being a broadcaster on radio, then television, than radio again, was just part of the story.
A native of Pennsylvania and a graduate of Penn State, Douglas (stage name - his real last name is actually Kruhoffer and he also has German citizenship), started off on the radio before starting to do a little TV while in college.

Douglas came to the Twin Cities in 1983. It was at KARE-11 or WTCN in the earlier days, that Douglas became a household name in the Twin Cities.
He was an innovator, and embraced technology quickly. He was the second meteorologist in the country to use computer graphics for his daily weathercasts. At KARE, he launched the now ubiquitous "backyard", doing his weather - in the weather. Rain, snow, humid sun, wind, Douglas was standing in that little courtyard in Golden Valley suffering through it all with viewers.

In 1989, while still at KARE-TV, Douglas founded a software venture, EarthWatch Communications. Hundreds of television stations in the United States and 20 other nations licensed EarthWatch’s three-dimensional weather graphics technology.

But it went much further than just TV when THE Steven Spielberg came calling. Spielberg employed the special 3-D effects in the movies “Jurassic Park” and “Twister" to depict realistic weather on the big screen.

Douglas also found his way into print, doing weather for the Star Tribune for nearly his entire career in the Twin Cities.

A devout Christian, Douglas teamed with Reverend Mitch Hescox, President of the Evangelical Environmental Network, to write a book called “Caring for Creation: The Evangelical’s Guide to Climate Change and a Healthy Environment.” Their goal was to frame short-term pollution and longer-term climate risk in a way that better resonates with conservatives and Evangelicals.

After departing KARE-11, Douglas left the Twin Cities briefly for a stint in Chicago, three years at WBBM-TV, before returning to a place he still considers his forever home, Minnesota. In 1997, he began a nine-year run as Chief Meteorologist at WCCO-TV and started to appear on the Don Shelby Show on WCCO Radio. That led to some occasional shows with WCCO Radio meteorologist Mike Lynch and a renewed love with radio.

Douglas returned full-time to radio when WCCO's Jordana Green approached him about doing an afternoon drive show with her once John Williams left WCCO for Chicago. The two had worked together at Douglas' Praedictix and the two came together again for a few years before Douglas returned to his roots: doing weather on the radio.

Now, stepping back from even that is a bittersweet decision Douglas said Thursday.

"You know, at some point you realize you have enough money, but you don't have enough time," says Douglas speaking to Vineeta Sawkar on the WCCO Morning News . "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?"

As we say goodbye to Paul Douglas on the radio (and television), the most important thing to share with listeners, viewers, readers, isn't the biography, the long list of accomplishments, the plans for the future. It's to say we'll miss having Paul Douglas around each day as our friend and colleague. Always there with a positive comment, a moment of encouragement, and an off-the-cuff humor that only the driest of wits can keep up with, Paul Douglas is one of our dearest Good Neighbors.

We wish Paul Douglas all the best and here's hoping his doppler is clear sailing into retirement!