TACOMA — Retired Seattle weather anchor Steve Pool died on Wednesday from early-onset Alzheimer’s, his family announced.
Pool, 70, worked at KOMO 4 for about four decades. He began his television career in 1974 as a KOMO 4 intern when he was a student at the University of Washington. Pool retired in 2019 after 42 years in the industry, according to a KOMO story.
“We are so blessed to have had him in our lives. He was an extraordinary man, husband, father and good friend to many. Please know that he truly loved his job and this community and felt so privileged to be a part of your lives. You were all so good to him and thereby good to us. Our hearts are irretrievably broken,” Pool’s wife, Michelle, wrote in a Facebook post on Friday.
Michelle Pool said her husband had been fighting the disease privately for several years.
“He told me multiple times to ‘never count me out’ and we never did. This past week it became too much and he passed away peacefully,” the post said.
Pool served in several roles at KOMO. He worked on the sports beat, then hard news and became the station’s chief weatherman in 1984, the KOMO 4 story said.
“It worked so well, and he was so good that ABC’s Good Morning America regularly used Steve as a fill-in. He was even featured in GQ magazine. Steve later hosted KOMO 4’s Miracle Network for Children’s Hospital,” the story said.
Pool is also the author of “Somewhere, I Was Right: Why Northwest Weather is Predictably Unpredictable,” according to a News Tribune story from 2005. Pool was inducted in the University of Washington Communications Hall of Fame in 2004, the story said.
“I’d say 99.9 percent of the things I was able to do here was so far, so hugely more than I ever dreamed in my wildest dreams,” Pool said on his last broadcast, according to KOMO’s story on his death. “Really, to be able to do this business and to be able to be successful with it, I’m really proud of that.”
Pool is survived by his wife and his two daughters Lindsey and Marissa, the Facebook post said.
