This story has been updated with new information.
After two weeks of teaser videos, WTMJ-TV has an official announcement: former WISN-TV meteorologist Lindsey Slater has joined the Channel 4 weather team.
“I am very, eternally, very grateful for WISN because they brought me home. But I’m even more grateful that I get to stay home with TMJ4,” Slater told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Slater will make her TMJ4 debut Monday, June 15, and will regularly accompany the station’s chief meteorologist, Brian Niznansky, during weekday evening newscasts, according to a TMJ4 news release.
“Lindsey knows southeast Wisconsin and southeast Wisconsin knows and trusts Lindsey,” Niznansky said in a statement. “Her passion and weather knowledge, combined with deep local roots, are hard to find. As part of Storm Team 4, she’s well‑positioned to serve as a trusted voice for viewers who already rely on her for accurate and dependable weather coverage.”
Slater’s addition brings the TMJ4 weather team up to five meteorologists.
Slater said in her new role, she’ll spend two evenings a week reporting from the newsroom and three evenings a week delivering weather reports outside, in the field – something she said was not a regular occurrence at WISN, which has a smaller meteorology team.
“TMJ4 is very big on their community aspect,” she said. “While some places might say, ‘We’re everywhere for you,’ they literally are everywhere. Their Storm Chaser is out every single day, and I’m going to be a part of that plan of theirs, of being out in the community.”
After nearly 10 years at WISN, Slater abruptly stopped appearing as usual on the station’s morning newscasts the week of Feb. 23-27.
Slater said she couldn’t share reasons for her departure from WISN. She hired an attorney, Robert Corris, who specializes in non-compete contracts – which are aimed at barring former employees from working for competitors for a period of time after their employment ends – and she said she wouldn’t share specifics beyond that Corris handled it.
In the interim of her working at WISN and TMJ4, Slater has been sharing daily forecasts to her personal social media accounts. She said that won’t change.
“I’m still going to do that – but now I have the support of having graphics that I can pull from a system, versus me just at home making graphics on Canva, which is very time-consuming,” she said.
Slater, who is from the Milwaukee area, joined WISN in June 2016, and became the station’s early morning meteorologist in July 2019. She said she knew people followed her on social media and watched her on television, but did not fully realize the extent of how many people looked to her for weather until after she left Channel 12.
“I never realized how much support was out there,” she said. “And I cannot thank people enough for just the amount of people that reached out – people I didn’t know, people I did know – and just texted me, emailed me, called me, all the message on Facebook.
“I did see each and every single one of them, and I am forever grateful that people were standing behind me and they continued to watch my forecasts that I did from my office.”
Now, Slater said she looks forward to working alongside other Milwaukee meteorologists she has looked up to and respected from afar, now in the same newsroom.
Contact Kelli Arseneau at (920) 213-3721 or karseneau@gannett.com. Follow her on X at @ArseneauKelli.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee meteorologist Lindsey Slater joins TMJ4 weather team June 15
Reporting by Kelli Arseneau, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Kelli Arseneau, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | USA TODAY Network
