Longtime broadcast meteorologist Paul Douglas is retiring from WCCO Radio

WCCO meteorologist Paul Douglas retired Friday, bringing to an end a broadcast career spanning five decades. But he’ll continue to run his Eden Prairie-based weather prediction company and produce regular weather columns for the Star Tribune.

“I’m retiring from radio, so I’m turning down the dial a notch,” Douglas said Friday, adding that he plans to spend more time traveling and with family and friends.

Douglas grew up in Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County, in the heart of Amish country. He earned a meteorology degree at Penn State and began his broadcast career in the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton area, where he worked for the local news station.

He soon moved to Satellite News Channel, which went live in 1982 and was purchased a year later by media mogul Ted Turner and was promptly replaced with CNN programming.

Douglas was hired in 1983 by WTCN-TV, the Twin Cities’ NBC affiliate, which later became KARE 11. It was at KARE that Douglas covered what he calls the most memorable story of his career: the live broadcast in 1986 of a Fridley tornado, captured at close range by a KARE photographer from the station’s helicopter. Douglas presided over parts of the broadcast as the twister unfolded in real time.

“That continues to blow me away,” he said. “There was nothing like it and there continues to be nothing like it. We were fortunate to be in the right place at the right time with the right team.”

A close second, Douglas said, was the 1991 Halloween blizzard that ended up blanketing the Twin Cities with nearly 29 inches of snow over four days. The forecast, Douglas remembers, was closer to four inches. But the storm system stalled over Lake Superior, a pattern that evaded every model.

“It was humiliating,” Douglas said. “It was a reminder that we don’t know what we don’t know.”

After a three-year stint at WBBM-TV in Chicago, Douglas joined WCCO-TV in 1997 and worked there as meteorologist until he was laid off in 2008. That same year, Douglas founded Praedictix, his fourth weather services company. Douglas was hired by WCCO Radio in 2017.

“TV stations, radio stations come and go, but I’ve been honored that I’ve been able to hang with the Star Tribune since ‘91,” when he began writing the newspaper’s weather column, Douglas said.

Still, he’s got a soft spot for radio. Douglas said he’s drawn to the medium because “everyone consumes it differently. ... Everyone has a different mental picture in their mind when they listen to the broadcast.”

He and his wife haven’t considered a move to warmer climes anytime soon, he said, calling Minnesota his adopted home.

While he’s not giving up his column or weather monitoring business, Douglas said dropping one of his jobs was essential for him to begin winding down.

“I envy men and women who can go from 100 miles per hour to a standstill. That’s probably not me,” he said. “Focus, for me, is a luxury and I am looking forward to focusing on the things that really matter.”