Twin Cities Radio: Paul Douglas Retires, Longtime Weather Personality

Paul Douglas

Audacy has announced the end another era at WCCO Radio this week as they 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. 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, then 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.

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.