Where Local Weather Comes First
We built SaukValleyWeather.com because the Sauk Valley deserved a weather resource of its own — one made by people who grew up here and actually care about it.
We launched in 2015 with a focus on Lee and Whiteside Counties and that commitment hasn't wavered. While regional TV stations stretch their coverage across hundreds of miles — from northwest Illinois to central Iowa — our attention has always stayed fixed on the towns, farms, and river valleys right here at home. For more than a decade, we've been part of this community, not just something that covers it.
The Sauk Valley sits at the heart of northwestern Illinois, defined largely by the Rock River as it cuts through on its way to the Mississippi. Sterling and Rock Falls face each other across the river; Dixon anchors the eastern edge of Lee County; smaller towns like Prophetstown, Erie, and Morrison spread out through the surrounding farmland. It's an agricultural and manufacturing region — 100 miles west of Chicago, roughly equidistant between Rockford and the Quad Cities — with a character shaped by the land, the river, and the people who've lived here across generations.
Weather matters differently in a place like this. A farmer watching a system move in from the west. A commuter judging road conditions before crossing the bridge into town. A resident keeping an eye on river levels after days of heavy rain. A regional station stretched thin across hundreds of miles can't always get that specific. That's part of why we started this.
Our Story
In January 2015, Kyle Morgan — a Sterling High School senior with years of technical production experience — brought an idea to Andrew Stutzke, a senior meteorology major at Northern Illinois University he'd met through church: build a local weather service from scratch, for the Sauk Valley, by people from the Sauk Valley.
Andrew was in. By March 2015, SaukValleyWeather.com was live.
Their studio was a borrowed room on the second floor of St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church on Third Avenue in Sterling — walls covered in children's handprints and hand-drawn flowers, equipped with their own green screen, microphones, and camera gear. It was a real production operation built on a shoestring, and it worked. Every Tuesday and Thursday, Andrew built the forecast and delivered it on camera while Kyle directed, edited, and kept the site running. Both were still in school. Both were working other jobs. They built it anyway.
Within two months of launching, Shaw Local — the regional news network serving northern Illinois — published a feature story on SaukValleyWeather.com. The community response was immediate. People were watching, sharing, and reaching out. For a site that had started with an audience of friends and neighbors, it was early proof that there was a real appetite for what they were building.
"It's all been positive so far — we know that the community loves to see their own people succeed."
— Andrew Stutzke, Shaw Local, May 2015
That early momentum carried the site forward. Over the following years, SVWX expanded its presence — growing its social media following, launching a mobile app that brought local radar and conditions to users' phones, and continuing to build an audience across Lee and Whiteside Counties. The site became a go-to resource during severe weather events, when the Sauk Valley's position in the upper Midwest puts local communities directly in the path of some of the most significant weather in the region.
The focus never changed.
The Founders
Andrew Stutzke — Meteorologist & Co-Founder
Andrew grew up in Sterling captivated by weather — the kind of kid who stayed glued to the TV during thunderstorms and tracked every forecast. A high school tour of the WQAD Channel 8 studios and a meeting with veteran meteorologist Neil Kastor in 2002 made his path clear.
He earned his associate degree in physics from Sauk Valley Community College before completing his Bachelor of Science in Meteorology at Northern Illinois University in 2016. He co-founded SaukValleyWeather.com the year before graduating, using the site to build real forecasting experience in front of a camera — something that fed directly into his professional career.
After NIU, Andrew joined WIFR-TV (Channel 23) in Rockford, then in 2018 landed a position at WQAD-TV (Channel 8) in the Quad Cities — the very station that had inspired him as a teenager. He was promoted to Senior Meteorologist in 2021 and earned his American Meteorological Society Certified Broadcast Meteorologist (CBM) designation the same year. He is also an FAA Part 107 Certified Drone Pilot.
Andrew has fully stepped back from SaukValleyWeather.com to focus on his television career. What he helped build here is still running.
Kyle Morgan — Co-Founder & Primary Operator
Kyle's connection to Centennial Auditorium — the 850-seat performing arts center on the Sterling High School campus — goes back well before SaukValleyWeather.com. He spent five years there developing his technical production skills while still in high school, and that background made building a real production operation possible from day one.
When he pitched the idea for a local weather site in 2015, he already knew how to run a camera, edit video, manage a website, and put a production together. He handled all of it from day one while Andrew handled the meteorology.
After launching SVWX, Kyle went on to earn his Bachelor of Arts from Northern Illinois University in 2019. Shortly after graduation, he accepted a full-time position with the Sterling Schools Foundation — the nonprofit behind Centennial Auditorium — and now serves as its Technical Director, overseeing production operations for the same venue where he first got his start.
He remains the primary operator of SaukValleyWeather.com, keeping the live camera network running and the site maintained.
Where We Are Today
Over more than a decade, SaukValleyWeather.com has evolved. What started as a twice-weekly video forecast has moved through several chapters — a growing social media presence, a mobile app, live coverage of severe weather events — each one shaped by what people needed at the time.
The camera network is where things stand now, and it's the piece that's stuck.
The Live Camera Network
We operate a network of live streaming weather cameras at locations across Lee and Whiteside Counties — including Sterling, Rock Falls, Dixon, Prophetstown, and more — providing a continuous, real-time view of the Sauk Valley 24 hours a day, every day of the year.
Each camera is positioned to capture what matters: road conditions during winter storms, river levels during heavy rain events, the approach of incoming severe weather, and the everyday landscape of the communities we serve. When the weather turns, our network gives residents views from across the entire valley — not just one spot, but multiple locations at once.
The cameras are accessible directly from the SaukValleyWeather.com homepage — no account, no app, no friction. Whether you're checking conditions before a commute, monitoring a storm moving through, or simply curious what it looks like right now somewhere down the valley, the network is there.
Local media partners also use the cameras, pulling live views during weather coverage and breaking news.
A lot of people who grew up here and moved away use them too — not to check the weather, just to see what home looks like. People reach out from all over the country to tell us they pull up a feed just to see the town. That wasn't something we planned for, but it might be the thing we hear about most.
We are actively expanding. What began as a resource for Lee and Whiteside Counties is growing — with plans to extend camera coverage into surrounding counties as the right opportunities emerge. We're expanding the same way we've always operated: locally focused, one location at a time.
Camera installations are provided free of charge to selected local businesses and locations that can offer a strong vantage point and a reliable connection. If you think your location would be a valuable addition to the network, we'd love to hear from you.
