Paul Douglas is the stage name[1] of Douglas Paul Kruhoeffer (born June 12, 1958),[2] a meteorologist, author, and entrepreneur in Minneapolis-St.Paul, Minnesota. He has over 30 years of broadcast television and radio experience.
Douglas Kruhoeffer was raised in Pennsylvania.[3] His hometown is Lancaster, Pennsylvania. While in high school, he began using the stage name Paul Douglas. He graduated from Pennsylvania State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Meteorology in 1980.[4]
While a senior in college, he began broadcasting the weekend weather reports for WNEP-TV in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and then after he graduated, he moved to weekdays. He worked for Satellite News Channel, based in Stamford, Connecticut, from 1982 to 1983. This was followed by a move to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he worked at KARE (formerly WTCN-TV and WUSA) from 1983 to 1994. He was a weatherman in Chicago at WBBM-TV for three years[5] before returning to Minneapolis where he worked at WCCO-TV from December 1997 until he was laid off in April 2008 as part of nationwide cutbacks by station owner CBS.[6]
Douglas wrote a daily weather column for the Star Tribune from 1997 until his replacement by the WCCO-TV weather team in February 2009. He provided forecasts for three local radio stations. He has been a reporter for the Twin Cities Public Television show Almanac.
In 2009, the St. Cloud Times appointed him as the head of their meteorological team[7] [8] and Conservation Minnesota partnered with him to create MNWeatherCenter,[9] a hub for Minnesota weather.
In 2010, the Star Tribune rehired him as a weather blogger.[10]
Douglas leads a number of companies that he founded or co-founded, including WeatherNation (as CEO), Broadcast Weather (as CEO) and Smart Energy (as President).[11] In 2007, he co-founded SingularLogic LLC, a patent holding company, and he founded Broadcast Weather and NoozMe LLC, which hoped to capitalize on SingularLogic's patents.[12]
He founded EarthWatch Communications in 1990, which created weather visualizations for the feature films Jurassic Park and Twister. He made a cameo appearance in a weather center scene in the latter. He co-founded Digital Cyclone in 1998 which created weather applications and supplies content for wireless devices under the My-Cast brand name. Douglas sold Digital Cyclone to Garmin in 2007 for $45 million.[13]
Douglas regularly writes and speaks about global warming and is critical of those who say that it is not occurring or is not caused by human actions.[14]
Douglas has authored two books, Prairie Skies: The Minnesota Weather Book (1992,) and Restless Skies (2004,).[15]
He has taught broadcast meteorology courses at Saint Cloud State University.
Paul Douglas and his wife have at least two sons, Brett and Walt.