Before getting dressed and leaving the house each morning, it’s only natural, and altogether entirely common to check the weather report. But who do you watch to give you the daily forecast for your area? These weather girls have done the work to make sure you won’t be walking out without a raincoat. And even on the cloudiest morning, they’re sure to bring a little sunshine into every day.
Originally hailing from nearby Puerto Rico, Jackie Guerrido settled in sunny Miami, where she scored a job at WRMA. Co-hosting a radio show, she delivered traffic and weather reports to the fine folks in southern Florida. Clearly capable of stepping in front of the camera, Univision snapped Guerrido up, giving her a position as a meteorologist for the morning news.
After spending several years as the weather girl for Despierta America (“Wake Up America”), one of the most widely watched daytime broadcasts by the Hispanic-American community, Guerrido graduated to Univision’s afternoon show Primer Impacto (“First Impact”). Since 2017, Guerrida has the covetable spot as co-anchor of Primer Impacto.
Our friends down under in Australia are in good hands with Seven News reporter and sometime weather girl Laura Dymock. Originally hailing from Brisbane, the capital of Queensland, Dymock has worked for the news network all over the area, including Bundaberg, Mackay, Cairns and the Sunshine Coast. Finally, Dymock came back to Brisbane, where she’s been ever since.
In her time with Seven News, Dymock has covered important current events, like the floods that came to Queensland in 2011, and Tropical cyclones “Oswald” and “Nathan” which hit in 2013 and 2015, respectively. Still, we can’t imagine any of that compares to the hot air balloon crash she was in on an assignment but don’t worry – she was totally a-okay!
Southern belle Chita Craft originally came from Knoxville, Tennessee, before undertaking college at Mississippi State University. Despite a stint in Redding, California working as a meteorologist for KRCR, the siren call of the south was too strong to ignore, and Craft came back from the coast, except this time to Houston, Texas.
Since moving to Texas in 2011, Craft has been the beloved weekday meteorologist for Channel 11. Reporting the weather every morning from 4:30 am to 9:00 am, you’d have to be a morning person to catch Craft on the air, but given her Southern charm, we’re sure it’s a lovely way to start the day.
After graduating with a degree in broadcast journalism from Middle Tennessee State University, Jackie Johnson packed up and headed straight to Tallahassee, Florida for a job as a reporter and weather girl for WCTV-TV. She’d later relocate to Miami, working for WSVN-TV, before trading one coast for another, and heading west to California.
Smack in the center of all the action, Johnson was reporting the weather as a primetime anchor for KCAL 9 News. By 2010 she was working with KCAL 9 News’ sister station KCBS-TV, but 2018 saw the announcement of her retirement from CBS and onscreen work as a whole, in favor of focusing on motherhood.
It was during her studies at Hunter College in New York City that Peruvian born Mary Gamarra got her first taste of broadcast journalism. In the midst of taking classes towards a double major in Media and Spanish and Latin American Literature, Gamarra got an internship at CNN as a field producer.
Her internship with CNN convinced her that a career in broadcast journalism was what she wanted, and so she continued her studies at Mississippi State University where she graduated with a degree in meteorology. Today Gamarra calls Telemundo her TV home, reporting the weather, conducting interviews, and any other assignment that comes across her desk.
If you’re looking for a comprehensive, and reliable weather report, The Weather Channel seems like the best place to go — and meteorologist Kait Parker is well-equipped to answer every environmental question. Parker’s not only known for her award-winning work as an environmental scientist, but she’s also gone viral in the national news.
When a report Parker had made was used by far-right website Breitbart to refute climate change, well, the meteorologist was not having it. In a rebuttal video, Parker used scientific evidence to contradict the Breitbart report, and make clear her stance on climate change. The video went viral, and even won her a Webby Award in 2017.
One of the more (if not possibly most) unconventional weather girls out there today, Roxana Vancea takes a different approach to reporting. After moving to Bucharest to attend the National Academy of Physical Education and Sport, Vancea took a job with the Neatza Show giving the weather to the people of Romania — with her own special flair.
Vancea has been known to report the weather live on air wearing a bikini, which, given the general climate of Romania, makes one wonder if she isn’t a bit chilly? Vancea also went viral after suffering a wardrobe malfunction on air, and although the incident might have caused endless embarrassment for anyone, Vancea took it all in stride and shrugged the whole thing off.
Just a year after fellow Mexican TV personality Yanet Garcia tried out for the Nuestra Belleza Nuevo Leon beauty pageant, Lluvia Carrillo not only entered the same competition, but was crowned the runner-up! And the similarities between Carrillo and Yanet Garcia’s careers don’t stop there.
Carrillo first started her career in broadcast journalism on Televisa Deportes, before taking up the spot as substitute weather girl to Yanet Garcia on Televisa Monterrey. Outside of her on-air work Carrillo models, and outlets like The Sun, La Guia del Varon, and others have all claimed that Carrillo is pretty fierce competition for Garcia’s status as most beloved Mexican weather girl.
Science has been of special interest to Cheryl Scott since her earliest school days. Her good grades and extracurriculars granted her a spot at Brown University, where she received a degree in geology. Soon after Scott enrolled at Mississippi State University, finishing up her schooling as a certified meteorologist.
All that studying paid off, and now Scott is the meteorologist for Chicago’s ABC 7 Eyewitness News. Off-air Scott can be seen out in the Chicago social scene alongside her fiancé Dante Deiana. According to Scott, when Deiana proposed on a hike in Hawaii, she “totally blacked out” before eventually saying yes — hopefully her degrees can help her determine if altitude was the issue?
Filipino-American Elita Loresca has really worked her way up in the world of weather reporting. Loresca got her start as a news associate for KCBS-TV in Los Angeles. There she put together scripts and managed operation of the teleprompter, but it wasn’t long before her on-air appeal was noticed.
Loresca’s early days prepared her for some of the most important moments of her career, reporting on Hurricane Frances while at WSVN Miami in 2004, contributing reports during Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Rita, and Hurricane Wilma. Hopefully all that wild weather is behind her, and Loresca has nothing but sunny skies in her current position with KTRK-TV in Houston, Texas.
Now the longtime meteorologist for CBS 4 News, Lissette Gonzalez got her start in television news through slightly more unusual means. Lissette started out as a pageant queen, and was named Miss Miami and then Miss Florida, before competing in Miss America in 1998. Finishing as the second runner-up, Lissette was awarded $50,000 in scholarship money, which went to her degree in broadcast journalism.
Lissette also double majored in Music-Vocal Performance, which led to a career Off-Broadway, and even a record deal with RCA. Eventually, Lissette put her musical career aside, focusing instead on her meteorological aspirations. She graduated from Mississippi State as a Certified Broadcast Meteorologist, and finished with honors too.
How does a weather girl end up recording a kazoo cover of the hit song “Shape of You” with none other than music sensation Ed Sheeran live on air? We’ll explain. Sian Welby worked as the lead weather presenter on Channel 5 for six years, where she only rose in popularity with every passing year.
By 2017 Welby left the weather behind, and was given her own radio show on Heart, from 7 – 10 PM, Monday though Thursday. And thus, Welby has recorded a kazoo cover with Ed Sheeran, and has his thank you note framed in her home (we’d frame something like that too).
Originally from the Philippines, Maria Quiban grew up in Eden-like Honolulu, Hawaii. After studying journalism at the University of Hawaii, Quiban began working at Hawaiian affiliate of NBC, KHNL. By 1998, she was living in Los Angeles, and on-air with the Orange County Newschannel.
Now a weather anchor for KTTV in Los Angeles, Quiban’s reporting style and close proximity to Hollywood has caught the eye of a couple of casting directors. Outside of her day job as a real reporter, Quiban has played a reporter in multiple movies and TV shows, such as Criminal Minds, Everybody Hates Chris and in Bruce Almighty.
Mexican weather girl Mayte Carranco actually began her career at an early age, only not in meteorology, but in music. Her dreams of becoming an international singing star turned into beauty pageant aspirations, which in turn lead Carranco toward television.
Taking the post of weather girl over at News Televisa Monterrey in 2007, Carranco went on to win the title of Miss Televisa Monterrey in 2009. Carranco has since left her native Monterrey for Mexico City. There she has continued to report the weather, while working on further her modeling career. Most recently she’s appeared on the cover of M Magazine, and surely more modeling opportunities will be rolling in.
Colombian model Ximena Cordoba has taken the world of broadcast journalism by storm since she first got her start on television, in admittedly an unexpected place. While most meteorologists get their starts as interns at local news stations or even on the radio, Cordoba first garnered attention after appearing on the reality show Protagonistas de Novela.
As far as Cordoba’s broadcast career is concerned, she has acted as a host on channels such as Fox Sports and its Spanish language counterpart Fox Deportes, TNT, and Univision. Still, Cordoba’s most recognized as a weather girl on Despierta America, where she delivers the day’s highs and lows, and always with her signature smile.
Multi-lingual Cristina Blackwell has her Mexican mother and Alabaman father to thank for her status as a double threat in the television industry. While attending the University of Texas and working towards a degree in speech and communication, Blackwell got an exciting internship with Latin media company La Presna. La Presna hired her full-time after graduation, where she gained experience assisting field reporters.
Blackwell moved from La Presna to Spanish-language station Univision, but has since settled back in her native San Antonio, where’s she worked for more than a decade delivering the weather on CBS’s KENS-TV 5 morning show Great Day SA. Off-camera Blackwell is serving up gourmet dishes to her two kids, because oh yea, she’s a professionally trained chef too.
French born and raised Ariane Brodier broke into television right after completing a meteorology course, and almost immediately became one of the busiest women on television. Brodier took the position of weather girl on M6, and after gaining popularity almost as soon as she went on air for the first time, was given multiple other hosting gigs.
While working as the weather girl, Brodier also hosted M6 B Music Black, LGK a program geared toward teens on NT1, and a nature documentary series on NT1 too. Nowadays Brodier has pared down her hosting duties, working on the show Service Maximum on France 2.
Before becoming a television personality, Yanet Garcia first rose to everyone’s attention in 2013 when she entered the Nuestra Belleza Nuevo Leon, a beauty pageant in Nuevo Leon, Mexico. Although she didn’t make it in the competition, the casting call was enough to give her an entrance into the entertainment industry.
It was soon after that she was sought out by Televisa Monterrey News as a meteorologist. Currently you can catch Garcia delivering the weather on Hoy, a Mexican daytime show. Off-camera Garcia garnered a bit of press over her breakup with professional Call of Duty video gamer FaZe Censor, but has since found love with former footballer and motivational speaker Lewis Howes.
Before becoming a weather girl, Jill Nicolini got her start similarly to many other meteorologists, as a model and aspiring actress. Nicolini had a few bits parts in television on shows like Law & Order and Sex and the City. Additionally she appeared in Playboy, did a stint on the Fox reality show Married by America and auditioned to become a band member of the Pussycat Dolls.
After all those early experiences in the entertainment industry, Nicolini turned toward reporting the traffic and weather on WPIX. After bouncing around to a few other networks like WCBS-TV, WLNY-TV and others (although always within New York), Nicolini has found herself back at her original home on WPIX since the Spring of 2017.
You wouldn’t exactly call television veteran Ginger Zee a weather girl anymore, since she was made the chief meteorologist for ABC News. Zee more than earned her stripes in the broadcast journalism industry, moving around from state to state and station to station before landing at ABC.
It was when Zee joined Good Morning America Weekend in 2011, that she really rose to meteorology fame. It was announced by ABC in 2013 that Zee would be their Chief Meteorologist and weather editor, having more than earned the promotion. Now she regularly appears on important ABC programming, like Nightline and ABC World News Tonight.
Initially serving as a meteorologist in smaller stations in sunny California and eventually across the country in equally sunny Miami, Christina Loren now finds herself delivering a very different sort of weather report. These days Loren’s reports are aimed at a different weather watcher — the farmers of Tennessee.
Serving as the weather girl for Market Day Report and Rural Evening News, Loren isn’t just delivering the day’s high and low temperatures. Loren’s forecasts include how the weather will affect agriculture, such as the impact on “emerging or mature crops, fieldwork conditions, cattle feeding conditions,” and more, as she explained on RFD-TV.
Initially getting her start at the University of Miami, Bri Winkler then moved to Amarillo, Texas to take her first big broadcasting gig for the NBC affiliate KAMR-TV. Within two years as morning meteorologist and co-host on Today in Amarillo, Winkler was brought to the big leagues, moving to Los Angeles to report for ABC’s Eyewitness News.
While at Eyewitness News, Winkler suffered a stroke, made a full recovery, and came back to work reporting the weather to millions of watchers everywhere. Still, looking to be more than a weather girl, Winkler left ABC to earn a master’s degree in environmental science. Now Winkler’s ready to combat plastics in our oceans.
Completing college at the University of California with a double degree in Broadcast Journalism and Political Science, Evelyn Taft is more than qualified to serve as an anchor. But before she settled into her current broadcast gig, she hopped around the California coast, first starting out as a meteorologist at KCOY in Santa Maria, and then at KRON 4, in San Francisco.
Taft finally settled at KCAL 9 in Los Angeles, where’s she been the weeknight meteorologist since 2010. Although Taft seems to be a California girl through and through, she could easily report the weather in countless other countries seeing as she is fluent in Russian, Hebrew, and French too.
After earning her certificate in meteorology from Mississippi State University, southern California native Amber Lee went to work delivering the weather at KOAT-TV in arid Albuquerque, New Mexico. While there Lee was recognized as “Reporter of the Year” by the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau for her coverage of some of the worst droughts in the state’s history.
Lee’s reporting on the droughts in New Mexico called attention to the insurance ranchers had bought through the government, and the claims they were then denied. Later, after the excitement of Albuquerque, Lee returned to her home state of California, where she currently works as the meteorologist on KCAL9 in Los Angeles.
Getting her start while at school in Pennsylvania, Maria Molina provided the day’s forecast in both Spanish and English for AccuWeather. By 2010 Molina had joined the Fox News family, where she was the meteorologist for multiple Fox shows, and often appeared on the widely watched Fox & Friends morning show.
After six years forecasting for Fox News, Molina left television to return to school. Currently pursuing a PhD at Central Michigan University, Molina is a graduate research assistant as well. While she works towards her doctorate degree, Molina is working part-time as the meteorologist for WJBK on Fox2 in Detroit. You can watch the weather girl most weekends.
Sources: NinjaJournalist, HyperActivz
