He said that as a youngster, he would submit questions to National Weather Service personnel, and “every Saturday I would make a trip downtown (to the NWS  headquarters). I really bugged them,” he said.

He eventually went to work for the NWS, from 1956 until his retirement in 1994.

“When I started working for them, you only needed 20 semester hours on meteorology. The people doing it on TV now have at least  master’s degrees,” said Wachowski, whose home is also the repository for Chicago weather records dating all the way back to 1871, to before the Chicago Fire.

He has file cabinets full of weather data, and is   dating all the way back to 1871, with everything backed up on computer disks.

He noted that comparing temperature records in the city over that many years “is kind of screwy,” since the readings were taken at four different locations over the years, including the University of Chicago from 1926 to 1942, Midway Airport from 1942 to 1980, and then at O’Hare Airport.

He said temperature readings can differ between those sites by at least 10 degrees, due in part to the lake moderating temperatures in winter and summer. But he  said the variation  used to be even more when O’Hare was not as built up as it is now.

“(Moving the equipment) changed the whole climate,” he said.

His home has been the official site for Midway since 1980.

“I remember I got a call asking me if I would accept the equipment here, and by the time I hung up the phone, I heard the truck pull up outside. I guess they knew I would say yes,” he said.

He keeps track of everything from the hours of daylight, to temperature, wind speed, humidity, and of course, precipitation, including rain and snowfall. He submits all his data monthly to the  National Weather Service, now in Romeoville

Because of the wealth of information he has at his fingertips, Wachowski has gotten to know  most of the TV weather forecasters on TV. Most have been out to his house, as well as other reporters and TV personalities.

But he has the closest relationship with Tom Skilling at WGN-TV Channel 9, who  regularly taps him for information to use in his weather reports on TV, as well as in the Chicago Tribune.

“We keep in regular contact, especially when it is snowing,” said Wachowski, who has even appeared with on air with Skilling, who calls Wachowski “the dean of weather observers.”

Wachowski has also been featured on the Weather Channel on cable.

He has vivid memories of all the local weather phenomena over the past 40 years or more, including the record-setting blizzard in January, 1967, and the tornado that went through Oak Lawn later that year.