COLUMBIA, S.C. — No, you're not seeing things. Jim Gandy really is back on News19!
Jim returned to the News19 Weather Team Wednesday in a special fill-in role. You'll be seeing him for the next few weeks working various newscast shifts as needed. Chief Meteorologist Efren Afante will be out for a few weeks, and Jim will be helping us out the short term.
Jim retired in 2019 after nearly 20 years as News19's Chief Meteorologist and 44 years of forecasting. However, he has come back to us occasionally to offer perspective on historical weather events. In 2022, he co-authored a paper on Climate Change that was published in Nature Climate Change, and spoke about the paper on News19. Additionally, the garden at WLTX is still named in his honor and he's come back for some segments to offer gardening tips.
Gandy was always known as a viewer favorite, well-regarded for his calm demeanor during severe weather like tornadoes, hurricanes, and floods. Jim is known as one of the nation’s most reliable hurricane experts, accurately predicting storm after storm including Hurricane Hugo and the Great Columbia Flood of 2015.
Gandy’s ground-breaking Climate Matters segments have been recognized by scientists and results have appeared in publications around the country in everything from Forbes to Rolling Stone. He was invited by the White House to participate in a Climate Summit in 2014 and named a NASA Eclipse Subject Matter Expert prior to the 2017 Eclipse.
Jim graduated with a degree in Meteorology from Florida State and started his television career in 1975 at WREG-TV in Memphis. From there he moved into Tornado Alley, working at KTVY (now KFOR) in Oklahoma City. In 1982, joined the Kansas State Network in Wichita. He moved to Columbia in 1984 to work at WIS and moved to WLTX in 1999.