As Hurricane Milton barreled east through the Gulf of Mexico toward the west coast of Florida, Leigh Spann, like many residents of the Tampa Bay area, wandered her home carrying a huge Rubbermaid container.
She had to decide—quickly—which possessions she would save.
“This is a picture I’d like to save. Here is a book. I guess everything else can go,” she recalls.
Spann BS ’01 lives in South Tampa, an area that floods during a simple summer rainstorm. Milton packed 100+ MPH winds and a possible storm surge of more than 15 feet.
Perhaps more than most, Spann knew the dangers. For the last 17 years, she’s been the morning meteorologist for WFLA, Tampa Bay’s NBC affiliate. A storm like Milton could wipe out large portions of a metro area that numbers 3 million residents.
“I try to keep that thought in my head when I’m talking about severe weather,” Spann says. “I know it’s scary. I know it’s not what you want to hear, but we are going to get through it.”
In the hours before Milton made landfall, Spann stayed on 24-hour call and didn’t leave the station. Heeding the warnings delivered by Spann and other meteorologists, millions of Floridians evacuated before the storm hit. In the aftermath, while property damage in Florida was massive, there was very little loss of life.
It’s not hyperbole to credit Spann’s work, and that of other area meteorologists, with saving lives. After the storm made landfall south of the area and passed out of the state, Spann finally left work and returned home. The neighborhood was spared. She unpacked her Rubbermaid.
Clear Skies Ahead
Spann grew up in Hazlehurst, Georgia, a town in the southeastern part of the state with a population around 4,000. She was the valedictorian of her high school class of about 120, and the University of Georgia was the only place she wanted to go. What to study was another matter.
Starting in fifth grade, she competed in—and won—public speaking contests. She also loved math and science. So, after she took a weather and climate class at UGA, Spann realized that a meteorology career might be ideal. She majored in geography and completed the atmospheric sciences certificate program, interned as a meteorologist at WMAZ in Macon during her senior year, and took a full-time job at the station the following spring.
What I always tell kids when I go to speak is how lucky am I that I found a job that had two passions that I didn’t think had anything to do with each other: math and science, and public speaking. And I got to bring them together.” — Leigh Spann, morning meteorologist at WFLA-TV in Tampa-St. Petersburg from 2007 to 2024
Spann worked in Macon for two years before moving on to a station in Charleston, South Carolina. Since coming to WFLA in 2007, Spann has worked the morning shift—first on weekends, then Monday to Friday. She arrives at 2 a.m., reviews the forecast, builds the graphics, and creates a rough script in her head about what she’ll say. The first broadcast is at 4:30 a.m.
Throughout her career, Spann has carried UGA with her. She keeps one of her UGA textbooks, Atmospheric Physics, with its highlights and margin notes still as clear as the day they were scribbled, in her desk at WFLA. And on football Fridays, she always wears red and black.
“What I always tell kids when I go to speak is how lucky am I that I found a job that had two passions that I didn’t think had anything to do with each other: math and science, and public speaking. And I got to bring them together,” Spann says. “And now I’ve had an almost 25-year career.”
And it’s a career that’s just pivoted in a new direction. In the fall of 2024, she announced her retirement from broadcasting. Following a bit of a victory lap that included station tributes and even a public meet-and-greet, Spann’s last day on air was Nov. 8. At the end of the month, she moved to northern Ohio to join her husband, who is a general manager of a TV station there.
She’ll be working as an agent for meteorologists and other television journalists. It’s a change that’s connected to the work she’s always loved but also a fresh, exciting challenge.
“If I can help someone find what I found in my career—how happy I’ve been—it would be worth it,” she says. “Hopefully, I’ll have another 25-year career.”
