After 50 years in broadcasting, connecting with the community is what Chuck Collins will miss most.
The chief meteorologist of WEEK-TV is retiring on Wednesday after two generations of forecasting weather to the Peoria and Bloomington-Normal TV market.
“The biggest thing I’m going to miss is talking to kids about weather. During the school year I would go to two or three schools a week talking to kids, especially grade school kids,” said Collins in an interview on WGLT's Sound Ideas. “Usually grades three through six, they have a weather curriculum they study. I guess I’m a big kid as well.”
Collins also speaks to churches and other community gatherings about weather, but sometimes a talk was as casual as an interruption to his trip to the mall or dinner with his family. He said times like those helped audiences realize something they might not about broadcasters.
“It just goes to show that I’m human or anybody else in media, they’re human,” he said. “So, it’s great recognition, but I take away from it just talking to people. We’re parents, we’re brothers, we’re sisters, we’re aunts, we’re uncles. We’re all the same and I’m no different.”
Collins said there are some critics he would rather do without, but he appreciates the support from everyone in the Peoria market, including Bloomington-Normal.
Before Collins was a household name in the Peoria TV market, he was a young college student who dreamed of working in radio. His journey started at Lakeland College, the only junior college in the state with on-air radio and television stations for students at the time.
“As soon as I walked in there and visited for the first time, I was hooked and so I went through that curriculum and got my first job right out of college,” Collins said. “And my first job was in Sullivan, Illinois at a 3,000-watt FM station. It was just a summer job.”
That first summer job was in 1976, and Collins got his first full-time job in Danville after the summer ended job ended.
Collins worked in radio for 12 years before he started his education in meteorology for television news. His first experience came from his career at WMBD, also in Peoria.
When he started in the mid-1980s, it was a combined AM and FM radio and television station, so the biggest barrier Collins had to cross was the hallway.
“I was working [for] WMBD radio, and I had a chance to do some part-time weather on the TV side right across the hall, and I got hooked on it. Then I went back to college,” he said. “I went to Mississippi State, the broadcast meteorology program for four years in the early '90s.”
After 23 years at WMBD, Collins said contracts aligned and he was able to achieve another dream — working at WEEK-TV.
During his 16 years at WEEK, along with his 38 total years of weather coverage, Collins has seen plenty of severe and recording-breaking events. Those include two major derechos in 2020 and 2024, the Illinois River flooding in 2013, negative 44-degree wind chill in 2019 and a New Year’s Day ice storm in 2021.
Collins said the most memorable by far, though, was the Washington tornado on Nov. 17, 2013. He remembers not just the devastation, but the immediacy of it for his station.
“That was a Sunday morning and the EF4 tornado that ripped through Washington, 190 mile an hour winds ... i came too close for comfort, because the tornado touched down on our station property in East Peoria,” he said. “And we were on the air with severe weather coverage anyway, and we actually had to leave the air.”
Collins said the feed cut to black as the WEEK team ducked for cover. He said when they emerged from their storm shelter at the station, the tornado was still on the ground and had turned into a massive wedge tornado headed for Washington.
“So that was the biggest thing. Especially the day after when I went out there to survey and look at damage ... just a big lump in my throat,” he said.
Another massive tornado Collins remembers is the Roanoke tornado in 2004. It also was an EF4 that destroyed a Parsons Manufacturing factory.
“One hundred forty people walked out alive, and they were all scrunched together in two heavily reinforced bathroom storm shelters built specifically for tornadoes,” Collins said. “The rest of the plant was gone, but the two bathrooms were standing and 140 people came out. Just a couple minor injuries with that.”
Collins also recalled the Groundhog Day blizzard in 2011. The WEEK team stayed at the station overnight because they did not believe they could safely go home. In addition to the 15 to 18 inches of snow, 70 mph winds and thunderstorms, Collins remembers his coworkers sleeping in their pajamas in sleeping bags around the station.
While it is easy to remember the worst and most terrible weather events, Collins said he truly does appreciate a warm and sunny day after the storm.
“I guess that’s one thing of why I got into weather. I’ve always been amazed how weather can be so changing in our area,” he said. “How we can go from an 85-degree warm day to severe thunderstorms and tornadoes in a couple of hours, then a rainbow comes out at the end of the storm.”
Once his retirement begins, Collins will not be short of things to do. He plans to continue gardening and landscaping at his new home with his wife, Linda. He also plans to spend more time with the Ian Fleming Foundation, which works to repair and restore the real vehicles used in James Bond films.
Collins said his favorite 007 actor is Sir Sean Connery, but he’s excited to see who takes the mantle next.
