Tim Steller's column: Chuck George, TV meteorologist, returns to Tucson, teaching

For the students, not so much. 

At Sahuaro, he is Mr. George, but most Tucsonans beyond a certain age know him as Chuck George, a locally beloved TV meteorologist who left KOLD in 2013 amid a personal crisis. George was the station's chief meteorologist for more than a decade, known for his excitement about teaching the viewing public the science of weather.

After leaving KOLD, he spent about 12 years in his home state, Oklahoma, and in Texas, including five years as a teacher at a high-flying public school in Houston. Pulled by the Old Pueblo, George moved back to Tucson in 2025. When he applied to Tucson Unified School District, they were happy to have him, but they didn't have positions in the areas he knows best, such as environmental science. 

So, in January, he found himself at Sahuaro teaching the math of personal finance. He's been learning the subject matter — topics such as effective interest rates, compound interest, and credit scores — on the fly, designing lessons together with Kaliah Sanderson, with whom he teaches for two periods of the day. 

"I have to learn it before I teach it," George said, during a few minutes in the teachers' break room. 

On Thursday, the lesson was about bankruptcy. 

"What's the first thing that comes to mind when you hear that somebody went bankrupt?" he asked.

Answers came tumbling from the class of seniors, even though they're nearing the end of their school year, passing around yearbooks to sign as they wrap up their high school careers.

"They can't provide for themselves."

"Negative accounts."

"Big debt."

'What kind of life circumstances do you think can cause somebody to go into bankruptcy/" George asked the class.

Students mentioned divorce, investment losses, job loss, and George tossed in a big one: Hospital bills.

"If you get sick, your hospital bills can be insurmountable."

It isn't the educational career that George dreamed of. He would love to have gotten a Ph.D and become a professor. Still, he said, "I love teaching enough that I know I want to do it the rest of my career."

'Major personal crisis'

George, 57, grew up near Tulsa, Oklahoma, and made his way to Tucson for graduate school in the early 1990s, getting a master's degree in engineering, focused on hydrology, from the U of A in 2009 after a long break for his TV career. It was the first of several times living in Tucson that made it an irresistible home for him. 

He was the chief meteorologist at KOLD twice, first beginning in the 1990s, and also spent time in Phoenix and Houston before ultimately heading back to KOLD again.

He was a popular local figure, appearing regularly at local events as well as on the nightly newscasts, where his enthusiasm shown through. 

In 2011, though, he took the first of several initially unexplained leaves of absence that raised questions around Tucson and was even the subject of news stories asking why he had disappeared from the air. It all finally came out in a harrowing 2013 story reported by his home channel.

George had been having episodes of severe depression, a condition that had been present in his family tree and began striking him hard.

"Depression is cold and it's dark and it feels like something on top of me. Something literally on top of me," George said then. "I, four weeks ago, was catatonic. I remember sitting, and the sun rose and set and rose and set and rose and set and rose and set again while I stared."

Months later, he left the station for good and moved back to Tulsa to live with family members and try to recover.

"We all go through crap. I went through it on TV as a public figure — not fun," George said in an interview last month. "All those years, everything was great. I just had a major personal crisis at the end, and I needed to get through it, and I couldn't do it on the air."

It's a painful episode he doesn't like to relive. But leaving town and living with family was truly helpful, he said. So was getting therapy and medication. It took him eight different medications, but finally he found the one that has worked for him to prevent those terrifying plunges. 

After a few years in Oklahoma, George moved to Houston, where he got his teacher certification and joined the faculty of an advanced public high school, East Early College High School, where students could take classes for both high school and college credit. 

"They're really phenomenal. The kids all want to be there. Most of my students were first generation (immigrants), and they work their butts off because they knew what sacrifice their parents had gone through," George said. 

'Tucson was home'

All the time, though, Tucson pulled at him. He thought one job was going to bring him back here from Houston, but it didn't. 

"It was great to be there, but Tucson was home," he said. 

George had a partner of 18 years before he left Tucson. He came back, and they reunited. And George went looking for a teaching job.

Sanderson, his coworker, was relieved when George showed up at Sahuaro in January, after the students had a series of substitutes in the fall semester. 

"Him coming in and being the permanent teacher was fantastic stabilization of the class," said Sanderson, who works with George as part of a special education requirement. "Working with him has been amazing. We bounce ideas off of each other. We plan lessons together." 

George's previous experience on TV also helps him perform under stress, Sahuaro principal Bobby Estrella said. And yes, the students force him to be patient. 

Asked about the biggest issue, phones in the classroom, both Sanderson and George sighed.

"Phones remain a battle," Sanderson said. "Mr. George and I, we pick our battles and don't nitpick."

'I'm more needed here than I was there'

The return to Tucson has felt like coming home for George: The mountains, the food, the people.

"I've dropped 30 pounds since I moved back in September, just from the healthier diet of Tucson and being able to get outside," George said. "And also, I have all these friends that I developed over the course of the 90s and 2000s — all those years — and I've been able to reconnect with them, and it's been a real treat."

But it hasn't been without drawbacks. He's shocked by the potholes and the number of unhoused people around. 

"It's just really overwhelming," George said of the people on the streets. "It doesn't affect my life. It's because I'm empathetic. It makes me I wish I could do something."

And working for TUSD rather than his Houston district meant a $20,000 per year cut in pay, he said, while working with students who aren't necessarily as academically oriented. 

"I feel like I'm more needed here than I was there. That's a good feeling. You always want to be needed in your job."

His teaching has also returned to Tucson television. After a chance meeting with Cathie Batbie-Loucks, KVOA's senior director of content and creative services, he joined the local NBC affiliate as a fill-in meteorologist. 

On Monday, he was on the air doing some of his trademark meteorological education. He posted a photo from a Tucsonan on social media showing little clouds that looked like waves across Tucson's sky. 

"See those wave clouds? They're called Kelvin-Helmholtz waves," George explained. "They're clouds that formed because of sheer in the atmosphere. By sheer," he went on, gesturing above and below the clouds in front of the photo, "we've got wind blowing this way here, and this way here, so opposite directions."

It was well after school hours at Sahuaro High, but George was back to teaching.