Don Woods (meteorologist)

Donald Kenneth Woods (February 5, 1928 – June 12, 2012) was an American meteorologist and cartoonist. He was the first television weatherman in Oklahoma to hold a degree in meteorology. He started his Oklahoma career in 1954 on KTUL, the ABC affiliate television station originally licensed to Muskogee and to Tulsa after 1957. He used a cartoon character called Gusty during his weather forecasts every night, drawing on-air, with a reference to recent weather as the focus of his simple line-drawn character.

Woods used Gusty to demonstrate how to be weather smart during

Every night during the weather forecast, Woods would announce a winner for that night's original Gusty. The Gusty drawings became one of the longest promotions for KTUL, lasting from the mid-1950s until Woods's retirement in 1989. Gusty drawings are installed in Tulsa's Gilcrease Museum and the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. The Gusty character also became a fixture at KTUL's sister station KATV in Little Rock, Arkansas, where beginning in 1972 Gusty was drawn by station weathermen Vic Shedler, Ron Sherman, Tom McBee, and Chuck Gaidica.^[1]

Woods's work was part of a 2010 exhibition on Oklahoma cartoonists at the Oklahoma History Center.^[2]

Woods has received numerous local, state, and national awards and recognitions. Woods taught at Tulsa Community College for a time. In April 2005, Gusty was named Oklahoma's state cartoon.^[3]

On June 12, 2012, Woods died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 84.^[4]

References

External links

• Don Woods' web page
• Online booklet featuring Gusty
• Short journal from the Oklahoma legislature about Gusty

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