So long, weatherman: Patrick Rockey, longtime WTKR meteorologist, retires

It was a ruined vacation back in 1972 that led Patrick Rockey to meteorology.

Rockey, a Hampton Roads native, was with his family at Lake Gaston in North Carolina when the remnants of Hurricane Agnes arrived. The campground quickly became a mess, he said, so the trip was cut short. On the way home to Northern Virginia, they couldn’t go through Richmond due to heavy flooding.

“It was weird and crazy,” Rockey said of the trip. “I remember seeing a lot of things and kind of being fascinated by it. I think that’s what started my fascination with weather, and I started paying a lot more attention to it. It wasn’t like that light-bulb moment saying, ‘I want to be a meteorologist,’ but eventually I got there.”

Now, after more than two decades at WTKR News 3, Rockey is preparing to hang up his weatherman hat Friday.

Rockey was born at Fort Eustis, and after graduating from Christopher Newport University, he continued with grad school at Murray State in Kentucky. He worked as a reporter at a local TV station before moving to South Carolina, where he took a stab at meteorology. After completing the broadcast meteorology program at Mississippi State, he took on weather full-time.

“When a job at the television station that you watched as a kid in your hometown opens up, you go for it,” Rockey said about moving back to Hampton Roads. “So the job came open, and I jumped on it when it was offered at Channel 3. I was on mornings. I was a morning meteorologist for seven years and then moved to the evenings as the chief for more than 15 now.”

Over the course of his career, Rockey has walked Hampton Roads through its most extreme weather events, including excessive heat, winter storms, tornadoes, hurricanes and flooding. His first was Hurricane Isabel, a monster of a storm that caused major damage across the region and left many without power for days.

Rockey started in December 2002, and Isabel made landfall the following September.

“I remember trying to track down a wind-up alarm clock to be able to wake up,” Rockey said. “Because I was on the morning show, I’d have to wake up at 1:30 in the morning. So I had a wind-up alarm clock and then I would go to the station which had power and a shower. Obviously, I can’t complain too much about that, because people literally lost homes or were out of their homes for years and years after Isabel. It left a lot of scars here.”

While he is looking forward to the vacation time, Rockey said his co-workers at the station over the years and WTKR’s viewers were what kept him coming back. He even worked with Ed Hughes, a longtime local TV journalist monikered “The Walter Cronkite of Hampton Roads.”

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“Television (has) its perks and (like) everything it has its downsides,” Rockey said. “We’re there when people are at home, you know? There are bad shifts, and you work holidays and that kind of thing. So I think I wouldn’t continue doing it if we didn’t work with just wonderful people.”

After Friday evening’s show, Patrick said he is looking forward to more free time to be with family and to take trips across the United States. WTKR News 3 has announced a successor for Rockey, as well. David Aldrich, a decades-long veteran of meteorology, will take the reins as chief meteorologist.

“I’ll probably be chilling out for right at the beginning (of retirement),” he said. “We plan on taking all kinds of trips. I’ve signed up for all the emails for cruises and all different kinds of things, and we’re trying to figure out what we want to do and where and what we want to see. I think at some point it may be just a big West Coast road trip. I would love to see Yellowstone and everything in Utah. That might be amazing, especially for meteorologists.”

Eliza Noe, eliza.noe@virginiamedia.com

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