Detroit's WDIV weather team expands with one new and one returning staffer
Detroit’s Local 4 News on WDIV-TV (Channel 4) has two additions to its weathercasting team.
Ashlee Baracy and Ron Hilliard are the newest members of 4Warn Weather, the new name for the station’s weather team.
The news was posted on the station's website Monday. They'll be joining current WDIV meteorologists Kim Adams, Brandon Roux, Paul Gross, Brent Collier and Brian Schuerman.
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Baracy, who grew up in Westland, is a former traffic reporter for Detroit’s NBC affiliate. Along with studying at the University of Michigan and Eastern Michigan University, she earned a meteorology degree from Mississippi State University and joined WBNS in Columbus, Ohio seven years ago, where she became that station’s first woman chief meteorologist.
Baracy also won the Miss Michigan title in 2008 and competed in the Miss America pageant.
Hilliard, who grew up in Detroit, is coming home to the Motor City from the Flint and Saginaw regions, where he was a weather and news reporter for WEYI and WSMH. A graduate of Michigan State University and Specs Howard School of Media Arts, he is currently doing post-graduate work in meteorology at Mississippi State University.
Baracy and Hilliard’s specific assignments will be announced in January, the station announced. WDIV provides weather coverage on its TV station, website, 4Warn Weather app and Local 4+ streaming channel.
Their hiring is the latest change in the shifting weather team at WDIV. Chief meteorologist Ben Bailey left Channel 4 in August 2021 after seven years with the station.
Meteorologist Andrew Humphrey, a 20-year veteran of the station, left in July. In November, he became the new chief meteorologist of Memphis's Fox 13 station.
Adams returned to weather reporting on WDIV in August after a 13-year absence.
Contact Detroit Free Press pop culture critic Julie Hinds at jhinds@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit's WDIV local news team is growing by two weathercasters
