A longtime television meteorologist in the Mid Atlantic has announced his plans for retirement: according to WRIC-TV, ABC 8 in Richmond, Virginia, John Bernier is stepping down on April 23.  With the station since 1984, Bernier has kept his Mid Atlantic audience informed about weather impacting the region as the station’s chief meteorologist.

Bernier holds a B.S. degree in Meteorology from the University of Lowell, Massachusetts, Magna Cum Laude. He is an American Meteorological Society’s Certified Broadcast Meteorologist and holds  the National Weather Association’s Certification of Television Weathercasting.

Throughout his long career at the ABC affiliate in Virginia, Bernier covered numerous historic weather events and natural disasters. Some of the more famous tropical cyclones he covered included Hurricane Gloria,  Hurricane Isabel, Tropical Storm Gaston, and the East Coast tornado outbreak from Fran and Ivan in 2004. There were also many snow storms and severe weather outbreaks that occurred over his 40+ year tenure.