Pat Pagano, longtime radio weather forecaster, signs off next week

Pat Pagano, the veteran WALK/97.5 FM meteorologist, will step down after a 50-year run at the station on Oct. 16, he said Thursday. Pagano, who also files daily weathercasts for other Connoisseur-owned Long Island FM stations — WHLI/104.7, WWSK/94.3 and WWWF/103.1 — will step away from those duties as well. Connoisseur hadn't announced a replacement by deadline.

No single personality associated with a New York-area radio station — or for that matter, this Patchogue one — has been on the air longer, and no one has filed more reports (about 10 daily). In a business now most often marked by layoffs, firings, cutbacks, downsizing or "rightsizing," Pagano, 75, is both an anomaly and a unicorn.

"I can't think of a soul inside [this station] or outside doing the same thing for 50 years," said Patrick Shea, WALK's director of operations. "He's certainly one of a kind and I'd keep him forever, but everyone deserves a break. We were blessed to have him for so long."

In a phone interview, Pagano said the departure is amicable, "But I don't really like the direction that the field of meteorology is going in. As you know, people go to social media or YouTube and there are so many different services — and now AI has gotten involved." All of these forces, he said, "have played havoc" with forecasting.

"I'm thinking, this is brutal. My contract is up in October, and if I opt to get out now, I could avoid all of this for the coming winter. The stress — the whole bit — pretty much pushed me to give it up at the end of my contract period."

Pagano — who spent most of his professional life filing weather reports out of offices at Kennedy Airport, then later in Valley Stream — is not technically an employee of WALK. Instead, he's contracted to produce those 10 prerecorded daily forecasts, and do occasional crosstalk with the DJs. In 1974, Pagano launched a forecasting service, MetroWeather, which ultimately provided weather reports to dozens of stations and others that needed reliable weather information, including sports teams (the Mets) and even TV productions like "Chicago P.D." and "Grey's Anatomy." (Pagano sold MetroWeather two years ago.)

His voice, and his forecasts, could be heard on other stations in the metropolitan area, but as far as WALK's listeners were concerned, he was all theirs.

In a phone interview, Shea said, "Think about all the things he's held our hands through — Sandy, countless nor'easters and ice storms — and think about how many kids sat around the radio to see if their school was closed. It was such a big part of when I was a kid. I grew up in East Islip, and as anyone in my area knew, the schools were rarely closed, unlike surrounding neighborhoods, and we'd be like 'Pat, tell us it's going to snow 18 inches today.' "

Brooklyn native Pagano, who lived for years in Woodmere but now works out of a home office in Rockland County, began forecasting the weather when he was a student at Queensborough Community College in the early '70s. After graduating, he got a part-time job with WLIW/21 in Plainview, then signed up to do the weather for Long Island's first commercial UHF station, Islandia's WSNL/67, which launched in 1973. (Along with the weather, he hosted "Rock Shoppe," an "American Bandstand"-inspired show featuring Long Island groups, outside his weather trailer.) When Ch. 67 folded not long after, he bought some weather-forecasting equipment that he used to launch MetroWeather. His first clients were WHLI and WRIV/1390 in Riverhead. He signed on to WALK on Sept. 20, 1976 — a warm day, with a little rain, according to weather reports at the time.

"Am I going to miss it? Yeah, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't, but I'll get over it — and just to know that I can sleep beyond 3:30 or a quarter to 4 every morning." Pagano said he's held discussions with WALK about returning on occasion to help with forecasts during extreme weather events.