CLARKSBURG, W.Va. (WBOY) — You might have noticed a new face on 12 News over the past few weeks, so 304 Today host Lauren Winans sat down with WBOY’s new chief meteorologist to learn how such a seasoned weather man ended up in north central West Virginia.
Having worked in multiple cities and several states, Chief Meteorologist Justin Kiefer knows all about moving based on the weather. Although he is from Montgomery, New York, Kiefer got his meteorologist start at a small TV station in Tallahassee, Florida after graduating from Florida State University.
As a Chief Meteorologist, Kiefer has worked in many places, including Tampa, Florida, Hartford, Connecticut, Panama City, Florida and Knoxville, Tennessee.
During an on-camera interview with Lauren Winans, he said that his family ended up in Knoxville due to Hurricane Michael hitting the area of Panama City where they lived in 2018.
Kiefer said that two days before the storm hit, he evacuated his family to Franklin, Tennessee to ride out the storm while he stayed in Panama City to inform the public about the category five hurricane, which left not much of a city to come back to.
“It wrecked everything in our town, including the schools,” Kiefer told Winans. He said that some schools were closed for half a year after the storm, so his son started going to school in Tennessee. After his wife also got a job in Tennessee, Kiefer said that he made the decision to follow his family up to Knoxville.
Now, after several years away from meteorology to help his wife with her tax business, Kiefer decided that being a Chief Meteorologist was his calling and north central West Virginia was meant to be his home.
When Winans asked him about the possibility of winter weather this year during the interview, Kiefer said that although projections suggest that this winter will be wetter and colder than 2022’s mild weather, he joked that in the past, he had a tendency to see more mild weather where he worked, so maybe this year would be w more mild winter for north central West Virginia.
Regardless of the weather in north central West Virginia, Justin Kiefer will make sure to be the best “first informer” he can be and giving the latest on weather on 12 News on air, on WBOY.com and on his Facebook and X pages.
