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Tonight, "Utah's weatherman," the legendary television meteorologist Utahns have welcomed into their homes for nearly 40 years, will do his final broadcast.
Mark Eubank will walk away from the green screen he has stood in front of at KSL for the past 16 years to begin his retirement, turning over his spot to his son, fellow television meteorologist Kevin Eubank. During the 10 p.m. newscast on Channel 5, the elder Eubank will turn his iconic white coat over to 31-year-old Kevin.
"I'm happy to pass the baton off to that young man," the proud father said. "He's smart. He's a fast study. He has the ability to see to the heart of the matter."
To watch Eubank work Monday night was to witness his undying fascination with the weather.
He was ending his career the way he wanted, with a blustery, frigid snowstorm threatening the Wasatch Front. By night's end, snow as white as Eubank's trademark sports coat dusted the valley.
He found himself correcting an assistant who told him Mother Nature was releasing her fury on his final few days as a television weatherman.
"I told her, no, Mother Nature was celebrating," Eubank said with a smile. "She was celebrating me leaving. Now she can do whatever she wants."
Still, on his third-to-last broadcast, Eubank's thoughts about leaving swirled like the snowstorm that just hit.
"I've had a wonderful career. I've seen it all. My goal was to help Utahns anticipate," he said. "I'm going to miss the excitement. I'm going to miss the people here."
And viewers likely will miss his infectious love and respect for Utah's impulsive weather.
"He's got a personable style, and he puts a little oomph into his weather," said fan Kay Nickelsen, 71, Salt Lake City. "I'll miss him."
There's little doubt that Eubank, 65, still gets a kick out of high pressure systems, storm advisories, cold fronts and wind chill indexes.
Ask him about this week's storm and his eyes widen, his face perks up, and he raises his hands to guide you through the scientific jargon as though he's giving you your own personal weather forecast.
"I don't know why I have such a passion for weather, but I love all faces of weather," he said. "All those things tweak me."
Talk about career highlights and he cites the storms during the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City as well as some of the worst natural disasters in the state's history: the great floods of 1983 and the tornado that wreaked havoc in Salt Lake City in 1999.
Ever since he was a kid watching the rainstorms from the bay window of his southern California home, "I've always appreciated the forces of nature, and it deserves respect," he said.
Decades later, his appreciation is stronger than ever.
Eubank skitters across KSL's blue-tinged studio at the Triad Center - back and forth between the green chroma-key stage where they superimpose weather maps behind him and the anchor desk where he chats on camera with co-anchors Bruce Lindsey and Nadine Wimmer.
After a one-minute weather update before the television cameras, he's off to the KSL radio studio to do an update for AM listeners. Then it's back to the TV studio and the KSL Weather Center (a large cubicle littered with computer monitors next to the anchor desk) for more TV time.
Normally, after the 6 p.m. newscast, Eubank would head back to his Bountiful home for a couple of hours with his family until the 10 p.m. broadcast. But on this Monday night, with the incoming storm as the lead story, he packed a paper sack with dinner.
Eubank's routine has mostly been the same ever since he first got the meteorologist job at the age of 24 at television station KRCR in Redding, Calif. (for $10 a day).
Back then, he had no formal training in meteorology. He just immersed himself in books, television newscasts and other research. But he knew he needed a degree to get where he wanted to be.
He graduated from the University of Utah in meteorology before he walked into his first Utah job as the meteorologist for KUTV Channel 2 in 1967. Then, there was no such thing as a chroma-key background, just Eubank, his flattop haircut and a simple weather board he drew on.
While the overall face of television news has changed since then from information to infotainment, Eubank's style has remained the same: Keep it easy.
"You have to keep it simple," he said. "That's my shtick - just tell the story."
That is what has kept him on the air for so long, colleagues say.
"There will never be another Mark Eubank," KSL News Director Con Psarras said. "His popularity and longevity are probably unparalleled in American television.
"What you see on TV is what you get. Mark is genuine," he added. "He is as enthusiastic about weather in person as he is over the camera, and in time, people recognized that. He's the real deal."
William Alder, former lead forecaster for the Salt Lake City office of the National Weather Service, is another longtime meteorologist who began forecasting Utah weather the same time Eubanks did in the late 1960s.
"He was enthusiastic, and it came through to the viewers," Alder said. "Like me, he has a real passion for the weather."
Kevin realizes people will be looking to him for his father's enthusiasm and spirit for giving Utahns weather information.
"These are huge shoes to fill, but I'm not there to replace Mark Eubank," said the son. "I want to try and walk alongside his footsteps.
"My father and I will talk about the weather until the day he dies," he added. "But where my sadness comes is he will miss the interaction with the staff and the community."
Regardless, Mark Eubank gets to leave, as his boss Psarras says, "on his own terms," a rarity in television news.
Yes, he will do the "trite" things that come with retirement: travel, spend more time with his 14 grandchildren (and seven children). But he wants to return to the research he has tried before - figuring out how to do long-range forecasting that can help the agriculture industry and others. With computers and access to weather-based databases, he says he can do all of that at home.
With that, the grey-haired busybody mostly seen by other KSL staffers as a streaking, white-coated blur looked up at the card he taped on the wall of his weather center.
It reads, "Do good. Do well. Have fun."
"I tried to do those things," Eubank said about the station's motto on the wall. "I hope I did those things. I certainly had fun."
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* VINCE HORIUCHI can be contacted at vince@sltrib.com or 801-257-8607. Send comments about this story to livingeditor@sltrib.com.