After 53 years on the job, record-holding weather forecaster set to retire

Coade’s record is now 53 years — and counting — mostly in Toronto and his native Halifax.

Coade’s interest in meteorology started in the late 1950s when he and his high school classmates were asked to take part in a day of job shadowing at the Halifax CBC station, where the nightly Gazette newscast was produced.

Other students jumped at the chance to spend time with TV reporters and camera operators.

“When it came to meteorology, nobody put up their hand,” he said. “But I was smart enough to know that this might mean a day off school.”

Coade, who had planned to be a Royal Canadian Navy pilot, would instead join the federal government’s weather service in 1962.

In 1965, in Goose Bay, Labrador, he got his first taste of delivering forecasts on CBC TV, mainly for the 7,000 U.S. military personnel at the nearby airbase. He was paid $5 per broadcast.

Five years later, Coade moved with his young family to Toronto, where he would later became staff meteorologist for radio station CFRB, while still working for the federal weather office.

During the 70s and into the 1980s, Coade became a familiar voice in Canada’s biggest city, where he also worked as a meteorologist for the Canadian International Air Show every Labour Day weekend.

He recalled the frustration of dealing with a deadly tornado in 1979 that touched down in southwestern Ontario near Woodstock. At least three people were killed and dozens were injured.

“That was really difficult,” he said. “We knew it was happening, but we couldn’t tell anybody. All the communication lines were down.”

He moved back to Halifax in 1990, landing a job as a weatherman for what is now CTV. He re-joined CBC in September 2007, after CTV announced that he had retired.

“They should not have said I was retiring, but they did not want anybody to follow me,” he said.

Known for his even temper and velvet voice, Coade has had a beer named after him — a “winter warmer” called Coade Word: Snowmaggedon. And now a software developer in the United Kingdom has asked him to lend his forecasting skills to a proposed video game.

Over the years, he has marvelled at how the science of meteorology has raced ahead, recalling how he once had to compile data from teletypes that worked at 60 words per minute.

“We had to gather all that, plot our own maps and analyze them,” he said. “Now, the computer spits out the analysis and the forecast for the next five days, as well as the charts … It’s taken a lot out of the forecaster’s hands. It’s a sad thing.”

Coade is particularly unimpressed with the week-long forecasts that have become the norm.

“It’s smoke and mirrors. We’re not at that stage with any degree of accuracy out that far.”

During his final week on the job, Coade is scheduled to return to the CBC TV studio in Halifax, where he has agreed to deliver seven-day forecasts — “much to my chagrin.”

Michael MacDonald, The Canadian Press

by Canadian Press

After 53 years on the job, record-holding weather forecaster set to retire

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