Thank You, Elliot Abrams!

• We want to join the rest of the industry and send our very best wishes out to a man we have long admired — AccuWeather meteorologist Elliot Abrams, one of America’s longest-reigning and most highly regarded weather forecasters, who retired as the company’s SVP and Chief Forecaster on March 1, closing the book a stellar 51-year career.

AccuWeather now has more than 500 employees, but Abrams was Employee No. 1. Company Founder & CEO Dr. Joel N. Myers met when Abrams was an undergrad at Penn State in 1967 and offered him a part-time gig calling in forecasts; he became a full-time employee after receiving his master’s in Meteorology in 1971. Together, the dynamic duo of Myers and Abrams created and grew AccuWeather’s network of radio stations, with Abrams doing his first radio broadcast on WARM/Wilkes Barre-Scranton, PA on Nov. 22, 1971. Stations in Syracuse, Philadelphia and other cities were added over time, as was a television service, which began in 1972. Since then, Abrams has been delivering his daily forecasts to radio listeners in Boston, Charlotte, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Cincinnati, and many other cities from the cozy confines of his broadcast booth at AccuWeather’s HQ in State College, PA.

Abrams said knew he wanted to be a weatherman when he was only five years old; he played a weatherman in a second-grade class play, he delivered a memorized daily phone forecast to his grandmother, and as a kid, he posted weather forecasts on his parents’ front lawn in Philadelphia like a “For Sale” sign for neighbors to read. So it was easy to forecast (get it?) that he would become a meteorologist. As Abrams recounts, “My son once said, ‘Dad, you knew what you wanted to do when you were five years old. I’m in 11th grade and I still don’t know what I want to do.’ And I said, ‘Fantastic! You’re normal!'”

Looking back on his half-century of service to the only company he ever worked for full-time, Abrams ponders the future, as he said, with a twinkle in his eye, “It’s been 51½ years, so I thought I might try something else.”

To enjoy the full story of Abrams’ impressive career and his retirement, please visit accuweather.com.