Ally Blake (‘16) grew up scared of weather. Now, she studies it.
Blake is a broadcast meteorologist at WMAR, the local ABC channel in Baltimore, Maryland. She covers weather events on live TV and works on predicting the weather behind the scenes.
“When I was three…I thought every time the clouds got dark, we were all going to die,” she said. “As I got older, I became more interested in the weather. When it snowed, or there was a chance for a hurricane, I wanted to be the first to know.”
Blake believes that one of the hardest parts of the job is the schedule. She often has to work at unconventional times such as 3 in the morning.
Predicting the weather is also extremely difficult.
“Weather everywhere is crazy,” Blake said. “I try to be as accurate as possible.”
Blake landed an internship while attending NC State with WFLA, a news station in Tampa, Florida that has been nominated for the most accurate weather coverage. Her current channel is the most accurate in Maryland.
Blake also has experience covering weather events on the field, being sent to see the damage caused by storms.
“That’s something that will always stick with me,” Blake said. “I remember going into someone’s house that literally had three feet of water in it.”
She covered a damaging storm in the summer of 2022 while working in Kentucky.
“I went to see it some time after to take a video, and I saw a pool noodle 15 feet in the air,” Blake said. “Seeing that really put things into perspective, the power of weather and the power of water.”
She also covered the 2021 Western Kentucky Tornado.
“I worked that morning and the model data kept coming out,” she said. “I was thinking the whole time this is going to be really bad.” The storm killed 74 people and carved out a 165-mile path through 11 different counties.
Blake’s favorite part of the job is predicting the weather.
“I look at different models, I look at different data, I look at past, present and future,” she said. “Meteorology is like the engineering of the sky.”
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