Weather for Minnesotans is important. It's flat out a lifestyle in the North Star State. WCCO has always made weather top-of-mind, from that morning bus stop forecast to severe weather coverage to Halloween blizzards.
In August, longtime Twin Cities meteorologist Paul Douglas hung up the Doppler and now WCCO is happy to announce a new voice giving listeners that crucial weather information, WCCO-TV meteorologist Chris Shaffer who joins us on the radio starting November 4.
Shaffer is a Stillwater, Minnesota native. He earned his Meteorology and Communications degree from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. A proud member of the American Meteorological Society, He's been awarded the AMS Certified Broadcast Meteorologist (CBM) designation.
No stranger to the radio either, Shaffer spent time on KOOL108, BOB100, 104.1 The Point (now Jack FM), Cities 97, K102 and KTLK.
"Yeah, I think all those years working in radio, a lot of people say, 'oh, were you doing the weather?' It's like, well for a little bit, but most of it was music driven radio from country stations to pop stations, to rock stations and that music just gets in your blood," Shaffer explained to Vineeta Sawkar on the WCCO Morning News Wednesday. "You don't even realize it but you start talking that way, especially when it comes to weather. There's so many songs, like Rock You Like a Hurricane from the Scorpions, Thunder Island, Jay Ferguson, they just, they just kind of creep in when you're talking about the weather and it makes it more fun."
Of course when you have Chris Shaffer on every day, you get some weather too and Chris talked some about our amazingly warm and dry fall so far. 83 degrees tomorrow for the Wild home opener? That's far from normal.
"Everybody's gonna be walking in, in their hockey jerseys and yeah, it's gonna be 82 degrees," says Shaffer. "It's interesting because the opinions vary. There are some hardcore people who are like, 'I'm tired of this summer stuff! I want some cold weather.' And we're gonna get it. Trust me. If you look down the forecast into the early part of next week, we're going to have our first frost, our temperatures could fall below freezing, Monday night into Tuesday. So I say soak it up, enjoy the warmth, it's going to be very fall like this weekend."
Rain is certainly another issue. Minnesota has become bone dry again.
"The troubling thing is we haven't had rain in a long time," says Shaffer. "I think we've had no rain for the past two weeks, at least in Minneapolis, St. Paul. It's been 40 days, only of 0.06 an inch of rain. You can barely separate your fingers that much. That's how little rain we've had around here."
Chris and his wife have family members all around the Twin Cities and are raising three daughters. There are also plenty of family pets including guinea pigs, a hermit crab, a turtle, a salamander, a frog and several fish. They currently have two goldfish and their Boston Terrier, Bailey.