Sunny days ahead, pickleball in forecast Meteorologist retiring after 39 years in broadcasting What I Know About...
By: AV Kitching Posted: 2:00 AM CST Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2024 Last Modified: 1:58 PM CST Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2024 Updates

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This article was published 02/01/2024 (989 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After 17 years of letting Manitobans know what to expect from the weather, meteorologist John Sauder, 62, will deliver his final forecast Friday on CBC.

Sauder’s broadcasting career started 39 years ago when he worked as a traffic reporter for KY58 and 92 CITI FM, doing reports from the pilot seat of a Cessna aircraft across the skies of Winnipeg.

He logged 8,000 hours of flying time in his 10 years in traffic before moving on to TV work, where he filled in for weather forecasters. In 2004, Sauder decided to return to school to gain his meteorology qualifications, studying for 30 hours a week on top of his regular job.

In the days before his retirement, he takes a look back at a career full of highs and lows. Answers have been edited for length and clarity.

I had to sort of reinvent my career… the flying job ended not by my choice; it was time for that program to end. I had to figure out what I was going to do and getting into TV was one of the ways to find my way again.

I took my weather training through distance learning… my lectures were on DVD. It was a three-year program that involved 17 different courses; that took a lot of my time.

Going back to school… was a really big commitment. I wanted to become a meteorologist because I didn’t want to just have “weather specialist” under my name.

I’ve had a lot of support from my wife, Kim, which I really appreciate and never take for granted. I graduated with really good marks and it has really helped my broadcasting.

There have been a couple… of challenging times in my career. Most of them are times when there is a tornado outbreak or severe thunderstorms. But it’s also worthwhile because when you warn people that the weather is coming and that there are some very strong winds, they are able to get all their animals inside, protect them.

That’s when people say, “You’ve made a real difference to us”; it’s the most important thing we can do as on-air broadcasters.

Manitobans are really tuned into the weather… when you do get busted forecasts, you hear about it! They call, they say anything they want on social media that they would never say to your face and you do hear some of that. I don’t get that a lot — I get more compliments than I do negative things.

People have a different sense… of what is accurate. If I say it’s going to be 15 degrees and I say that five days out and on that day it turned out to be 16 degrees, people will say, “You are wrong; you were off by a degree.” We have different temperatures in all different areas of the city; it’s not always one uniform temperature.

Mother Nature can… really do anything she wants to do. If she’s in a bad mood, she can make you look really foolish. As a forecaster, I have a busted forecast or two. All meteorologists have had this.

With weather systems… there is always something changing. Our weather is always moving and being able to forecast it is tricky, but I believe that forecasting is getting better and better. I believe the field of meteorology is getting better and better.

I’ve been doing weather on TV… since 1995 and I have seen many changes in that period. Numerical weather prediction centres, such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA), National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), have been improving rapidly.

The Canadian models are also consistently getting better. These days, a five-day forecast is as accurate as a one-day forecast was back in the early ‘80s.

There are so many… different sources for people to get their weather from. Apps on the phone are based on a computer-model consensus; there is no human intervention in that forecast.

Depending on if you have an iPhone or Samsung, the iPhone’s weather-channel computer is in Georgia and the AccuWeather computer is in Pennsylvania. The most important thing about that is it is based on one model and that is it — it’s not an ensemble of models.

People being able to share… weather information immediately online is a good thing as long as they are not trying to alarm people needlessly. There is a fine line that needs to be drawn: if people can look at something on social media and see approaching weather systems, it will make them think twice about going out on a highway.

Fresh snow inside the city, it’s not that bad, the visibility is OK, but that wind could be whipping around that snow and people sharing a picture, sharing the proof, then those in the city might think twice about going out on the highway.

I have seen instances… where people mix up the word “watch” and “warning.” They have no experience, no knowledge of weather and they claim they are chasing a storm and alarming people.

I don’t think that’s a very good thing. But then social media has allowed even me to share information, so it is very useful.

Climate is what you expect… weather is what you get. We buy our clothing based on the climate, but we wear our clothing based on the weather. That’s the way I explain the difference between climate and weather to people.

Before I go away on a trip… I do check the weather, but I might not check it in the same way other people do. I look at satellite and radar data and make decisions based on the raw data, rather than something that a computer has churned out.

Red sky at night… sailor’s delight! It means that the skies are clear to the west and you’ll wake up to nice weather in the morning.

It’s based loosely on a very average weather pattern, but there’s complications in the weather all the time, so it doesn’t always work out that way.

I am always… thinking about the weather. Weather has always intrigued me. My dad was a pilot in the air force and I was always interested in aviation. Looking up and seeing the clouds, I had a yearning to find out what they were made of.

I do a lot… of personal forecasting. My friends access me for weather information, for sure. Especially if they are driving within Manitoba or if my brother-in-law wants to go golfing.

This was the third-warmest December on record… Records go back 150 years. It was a very mild Christmas as well. The normal daytime high right now is -13 C. Christmas Day in Winnipeg managed only -7 C, but the day before and the day after were warmer.

Christmas Eve, our high was just above zero and we had rain in the morning that changed to snow as colder air moved in.

In Winnipeg we always have a 99 per cent chance of having a white Christmas. Technically, I think we did have a white Christmas, but just barely. Very thin snow cover.

It’s unusual to not have snow on the ground right now… it’ll start to feel a little more like January by mid-week with cooler temperatures moving in, only to warm up again by Friday.

I know some of you are hoping for more snow. I don’t any significant dumps of snow this week, although there is one forecast model that was hinting at a decent five to seven centimetres or so on the weekend. We’ll see how this tracks in the days to come.

Being recognized in public… is very difficult for me. It’s easier now because I have had a lot of help with it.

I didn’t do this to get recognized or to get public notoriety. I love all things about the weather — I love talking about the weather, I love creating the graphics that appear behind me — so I have learned to handle it.

My favourite season… is probably summer. I do like all the seasons: I love winter because I am a winter sport enthusiast, spring because summer is coming and fall is a great season to get out to do biking, hiking and camping.

After I retire… I plan to enjoy not being on a constant schedule or deadline. Kim and I are an active couple, so we plan to do a lot more skiing (both cross-country and downhill), hiking, travelling, golfing etc. She has been playing pickleball for a few years and I have recently learned, so we’ll do some of that, too.

Looking back… at 39 years I have been in broadcasting, what I feel most privileged by is that people invite me into their homes and their cars on a nightly basis.

I don’t know how to express my appreciation properly to all those people over that many years. The people who do watch me and listen to me, they made the choice to do that and I just think that it’s such an honour, I really do.

av.kitching@freepress.mb.ca