Quelling The Storm - Profile of Ashley Gann

By: Josh Herring

On April 27th, 2011, a super outbreak of tornadoes plagued the Southeast, demolishing homes and killing over 300 people. A young chief meteorologist in Montgomery, Ashley Gann, was covering the madness that day. Gann, now a chief meteorologist at CBS42 Storm Team in Birmingham, recalls the devastating events of that day as if they were yesterday. It was a turning point for her. She was no longer just predicting the weather.

“I realized I'm no longer just communicating science to people. I'm saving people's lives,” Gann said of the personal impact of that day. But sometimes, some can not be saved. And for Gann, that can be a big deal.

“As someone who tells people to seek shelter, when a tornado is coming, I mourn when people pass away. I've been on television when people die because a tornado hits their house or maybe they're not in their house and they're not in their safe place,” Gann says.

Unfortunately, that’s part of the job as a meteorologist. Not everyone will listen. But building that trust is paramount in saving as many lives as possible on those bad days. “I have to say, even on the sunny days, I'm holding your hand telling you it's gonna be great and sunny. I'm building your trust, right? So then when it's that really hard day, I have to tell you about tornadoes, you're still listening to me,” Gann said.

Why continue to predict the weather when bad things can happen? Gann puts it simply, “Hands down the people. And I love the science. That's what got me into my profession. Very quickly I learned that I get to use the science to talk to people.” And talking is something that comes naturally to her.

Since her time as a “War Eagle girl” at Auburn University from 2001 to 2005, where she majored in aerospace engineering, she has felt comfortable talking to an audience. “Using some of those interactions that I had at Auburn in the role of War Eagle Girl, I use it in my daily life now as a meteorologist.”

That, along with her time in the engineering school, which is where she learned important facets of weather predictions - such as thermodynamics - culminate into a package fit for predicting the weather for an audience. Even though she has limited interactions between herself and the viewer, she views her role as immensely important.

“Even though I talk to a camera for a living, my goal is to use that camera as a vehicle to talk to people,” she says. Gann gets testimonials from those listening to her broadcast, guiding them to safety with a calm demeanor and strong camera presence.

“I was the voice they could listen to that would be the calm in that storm,” she says. After 17 years of working in the field, she is fairly confident in her ability to predict the weather, despite it being a relatively “new science,” unlike that of medicine, for example. There has only been a handful of incidents that have caught her by surprise.

“Snowmageddon,” a snowstorm that affected the Southeast United States, of 2014 came just 48 hours after days of 60-degree weather. It was unprecedented, but there is now reference for the future.

“This was not what we had forecast, but we began to understand why it happened,” Gann said. “So that's the key is when situations like that happen, it's figuring out why did that happen? And we have that answer now. So, in the event that this setup happens again, we can look at that setup and remember.”

As she continues to make a difference in the lives of others, she can only continue to take her advice as severe weather rolls through the South. With the ever-present threat of death, destruction, and despair, Ashley Gann hopes to quell the fear of storms for years to come.