Shortly before channel 8 (as KTVX) signed on in Muskogee, station management sought to hire a weather anchor who could draw a cartoon character. Woods – one of the few professional meteorologists on Tulsa television at the time and the first television weather anchor in Oklahoma to hold a meteorology degree – was chosen, and his cartoon character became Gusty, a boy caricature based on one which Woods created in 1953 as a meteorologist at KTVH (now Wichita-licensed KWCH-DT) in Hutchinson, Kansas, who was named through a contest held beginning the day of channel 8's sign-on. Throughout his 35-year tenure at the station, Woods drew Gusty live during his weather forecasts in a way that viewers could tell what the expected weather was by what Gusty was doing or wearing: as examples, he could be drawn waving flags and smiling for fair weather, holding an umbrella if rain was forecast or jumping in his "fraidy hole" for thunderstorms. Viewers even sent in requests for their own Gusty drawings, with Woods holding on-air drawings selecting a viewer who would win one. After Woods retired from KTUL on March 3, 1989, he continued to work as a watercolor artist and drew Gusty on occasion; Woods even authored a book entitled The Gospel According to Gusty, and one of his Gusty drawings is currently housed at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., which received the drawing in 1970 as a representation of contemporary American art. In April 2005, the Oklahoma Legislature passed and then-Governor Brad Henry signed a state resolution designating Gusty as the state's official cartoon character.
