![]() “We had good talks,” Tardy told the San Diego Union-Tribune. Wiltgen died from major head and brain injury. Tardy also said Coleman never tried to push his skepticism about climate change being man-made. UPDATE, 12:15 PM: The Fulton County (GA) Medical Examiner’s office has ruled Weather Channel meteorologist Nick Wiltgen ’s death a suicide. “He brought a lot of energy and color and enthusiasm to forecasting. “This is a big loss for the weather community,” said Alex Tardy, a forecaster at the National Weather Service. Jason Austell, an anchor for the station’s “Good Morning San Diego,” tweeted that Coleman was “a beloved meteorologist.” Two years later the American Meteorological Society named Coleman their Broadcast Meteorologist of the year.Ĭoleman went on to join KUSI-TV in San Diego, where he spent 20 years as a weatherman before retiring in 2014. He served as CEO of the Weather Channel for about a year after helping launch it in 1981. Coleman worked at several local stations in Chicago and the Midwest before joining “GMA” when it launched in 1975, staying with the program for seven years. The Texas native got his first TV job while still a student at the University of Illinois. Linda Coleman told the Associated Press her husband died Saturday night at home in Las Vegas. “He stood by what he thought to be true.LAS VEGAS – John Coleman, who co-founded the Weather Channel and was the original meteorologist on ABC’s “Good Morning America” during a six-decade broadcasting career, has died, his wife said Sunday. He owned his beliefs,” said Scott, who worked with Coleman for 20 years. His career, though, was not without controversy, which he courted by telling people global warming was a “scam” and a “hoax.”Ĭoleman was so convinced of his beliefs that he eventually dropped out of the American Meteorological Society, which had named him AMS Broadcast Meteorologist of the Year in 1983. Nicholas Wiltgen, a meteorologist at The Weather Channel for more than 15 years, died Sunday in a crash in Atlanta. Renowned researcher and storm chaser Tim Samaras, 55, his son Paul Samaras, 24, and his chase partner Carl Young, 45, passed away after they were overtaken by the multiple-vortex tornado. In time, though, it evolved into a place where millions of Americans turn first to track hurricanes in Florida, blizzards in the Midwest and Santa Ana winds in California, among other phenomena.įrom there, he went on to do the weather in New York and Chicago, then landed at KUSI in San Diego in 1994, when he was 60. His visionary work at the Weather Channel wasn’t immediately clear as it languished as a little visited cable station. But he left after about a year due to internal friction. ![]() But the idea led to the creation of the Weather Channel, and for a while Coleman served as the network’s president, CEO and as a meteorologist.Ĭoleman got the Weather Channel - or TWC - up and going in 1981. John Coleman, who co-founded The Weather Channel and was the original meteorologist on ABCs 'Good Morning America' during a six-decade broadcasting career but who later drew peoples anger for. It was 1953 and, before long, he was tapped to do the weather by Champaign’s WCIA-TV.Ĭoleman worked his way up the TV ranks and in the mid-’70s moved on to “Good Morning America,” which became a powerhouse with its hosts Joan Lunden and David Hartman.Ībout seven years later, Coleman proposed the creation of a 24-hour-a-day national weather network, which some broadcasters thought was ludicrous. In a classic showbiz story, Coleman ended up filling in one day when the weatherman for the college station didn’t show up for work. Coleman attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the 1950s and got deeply involved with radio. 15, 1934, in Alpine, Texas, a small town southeast of El Paso. You made so many of us happy, may you rest in peace and thank you.”Ĭoleman was born on Oct. “I was happily surprised when I moved to the San Diego area and found you were ‘my’ weatherman again on KUSI News. I am originally from Chicago and I grew up watching you forecast the sun and the snow. Dave Schwartz, a longtime Weather Channel meteorologist who early this year told his viewers about his struggle with cancer, died of the disease on Saturday. Linda Newell, one of the station’s viewers, wrote on Facebook on Sunday: “Dear John Coleman, you made me smile for years. He also was shown delivering his gleeful “K-UUUUUU-S-I” call-out. The tribute showed Coleman dancing to James Brown music during one forecast and kicking up his left leg and yelling “breeeeze” in another, when windy weather was the topic of the day. KUSI forecaster Dave Scott said in an on-air tribute Sunday, “There is simply no one like John Coleman.”
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