Sacramento meteorologist Mark Finan retires after 33 years at KCRA. What’s next for him?

Sometimes it seemed like all he did was talk about the weather.

Weather segments with Mark Finan on KCRA-TV is something capital region viewers have all experienced since 1991. He paused our dinner routines, interrupted our children’s homework, tucked us in at night.

He was as reliable — and relatable — as the Delta breeze.

And, when the news came first, he was the most visible face in the eye of severe storms, wildfires, floods, heatwaves, tornadoes and everything in between.

After 33 years, rain and shine, Sacramento’s chief meteorologist is retiring from Channel 3 with his final forecast coming Friday evening.

On Jan. 1, 1997, Finan was not celebrating the ushering in of a new year but instead starting to cover torrential downpours in Northern California. The flooding ultimately required a record-breaking 80 hours of coverage, with no commercial breaks or pauses — work that both helped Finan secure his spot as chief meteorologist for the station later that year and an important moment in achieving his true career goal of serving the public.

Finan, who turns 65 this month, has also secured celebrity status in Northern California in his three decades at the Hearst-owned NBC station. His iconic voice and assurance that the Delta breeze would cool down the Valley informed hundreds of thousands, and accordingly, as he put it, his retirement is “bittersweet.”

Finan’s first major exposure to audiences was in 1995 — during the flooding of Cirby Creek in Roseville — where he was bothered by the fact that KCRA couldn’t serve as more of a resource, as it had little information to provide. This feeling, he said, guided him in the 1997 floods and major weather events since.

“If I had been evacuated from my home, if my home was under threat of flood or fire and I had to evacuate, what would I want to know?” Finan said, “I try to put myself in the shoes of people that are being impacted by that weather.”

Once camera-shy, Finan said he has always had a curiosity about the weather, and has held onto that curiosity since he was 5 years old.

Forty years of sharing his curiosity with the public to formulate weather reports and respond to crises has taught him never to take people’s trust for granted, a lesson that he said also applies to life.

“You don’t get everything right, but if you make a mistake, if something happens, then you try to look back, learn from it, and move on,” Finan said.

Kellie DeMarco, former KCRA anchor and colleague of Finan’s, recalled many breaking stories for which Finan was tapped to provide important mapping, such as in wildfire coverage and the Oroville Dam spillway crisis in 2017, often doing much more than forecasts and rainfall totals.

His understanding of what audiences needed to know, she said, made him stand out as one of the best in the market.

“Where Mark really shined was in breaking news,” DeMarco said. “He teaches viewers the impacts that the weather has on news.”

Fellow KCRA meteorologist Dirk Verdoorn, who worked with Finan over 26 years, noted Finan placed importance on getting the story right and was always willing to put in extra hours.

Finan’s dedication to accuracy taught Verdoorn never to exaggerate or jump the gun, and always to keep things in perspective. Rather than try to make weather predictions too early, Verdoorn said Finan would take a step back and make sure to tell the right story.

Verdoorn said last year’s flooding on the Cosumnes River near Elk Grove showed Finan’s commitment. Echoing the dedication he put in early on in his career to cover the 1997 floods, Finan hurried to help cover the deadly flooding in 2023.

“He was at home but as soon as stuff started happening he was out there on Highway 99,” Verdoorn said. “He was there before anyone asked him to be there.”

Forty years of meteorology also came with many changes, most notably technology that transformed weather reports from one-day forecasts to weather patterns over the course of a week.

Finan also adapted to the proliferation of media platforms by hosting live sessions on Facebook to answer questions twice a week and posting home office weather reports on his YouTube channel to nearly 10,000 subscribers, many of whom have wished him well in his retirement.

Although one of Finan’s weather dreams to see a tornado has not yet been realized, one of his favorite days at work came last year when he flew in KCRA’s LiveCopter 3. It marked his first time in a helicopter and gave him an exciting new view of Yosemite, one of his favorite photography spots.

“News is a grind and there’s honestly not very many people that last in news this long,” DeMarco said. “I really hope that he is able to just finally relax and enjoy his time off.”

To celebrate his career, KCRA aired clips of Finan covering major weather events throughout the week and broadcast a half-hour special of his “Most Memorable Moments” on Thursday night. During his final Facebook Live session on Thursday, Finan said his last weather segment would be at 7 p.m. Friday.

KCRA hasn’t announced any plans for the weather team’s future. But Finan said in his retirement announcement in April that he was leaving weather coverage in good hands.

“That’s one of the things I’m most proud of, the team we have,” Finan said of Verdoorn, Tamara Berg, Eileen Javora, Heather Waldman and Kelly Curran, who joined the station from Las Vegas in March.

Although he’s retiring from Channel 3, Finan emphasized that he is not retiring from the weather. His curiosity about the weather has put him into a routine of waking up and immediately checking maps, which he will continue to do every morning.

Whatever Finan’s future holds (he hopes more traveling), colleagues and viewers agree that KCRA will be different without Finan’s dedicated reporting.

“I always told him you can’t retire until I retire,” Verdoorn joked. “It’s going to be a hole that’s going to be hard to fill.”

Monica Woods, ABC10’s chief meteorologist lauded her competitor’s accomplishments.

“He has earned every second of retirement because he has just been so dedicated to his craft and we all benefit from it, viewers and people in the broadcasting community alike,” Woods said.

Finan said the response so far to the news of his retirement has been overwhelming, between notes from colleagues he knew in the beginning of his career in Maine and New York, comments online and cards he has received.

“I want to thank the community,” Finan said. “I appreciate the viewers, I appreciate the community here in Northern California and the way they have treated me over the last 30 years.”