STEM Saturday: Corallys Ortiz

Corally Ortiz is a broadcast meteorologist at THV11 in Little Rock, Arkansas. She has been with the team for 2 years, and today, she is giving us a glimpse of what a day in her career is like.

[ “Hey guys, here is the day in my life as a TV Meteorologist. Today was a Saturday and I just woke up after covering for the morning show. Now, I’m getting ready for the evening show. You have to pack on the concealer so you don’t see how tired I am. And when it comes to makeup for TV, you’d kind of have to pack it all on because we have all of those HD cameras and you don’t want to look washed out. So this is my final look! On my way to work about an hour before the show, I spend my time working on my forecast, looking at all of the different models to have a better picture about what the weather story is going to be over the next few days.
Then from there I walk over to the studio. You guys can have a better idea of how my view looks in front of me. I have a prompter but i don’t read a script, that’s just what is rolling throughout the show. I have a monitor in front of me and on the side so I know what to look at. Here’s a look at our studio right now as I’m getting ready to put in our forecast. Our weather program allows us to punch in the numbers so you see on the 7 day forecast. Then, I start working on some graphics. Think of it like a fancy powerpoint presentation, then we gear up for the show.
Personally, I hate this part the most. It’s so tedious trying to find ways to hook this on to you. Then we put in our earpiece onto a box called an IFB. We put out mic gear on and try to find the best way to hide all of the wires and hook everything into place. Then, we’re ready to go and I’ll do a few last minute touches and we’re ready to get started for the show.” ]

Corallys is of Dominican descent, born in San Juan, Puerto Rico but raised in Massachusetts. She grew up in an area that always had rapidly changing weather. At a young age, Corallys says she would drive her family crazy because she only wanted to watch local news or the Weather Channel. Corallys attended Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida, and received her B.S. in Operational Meteorology along with a minor in communications and broadcast media. Corallys also implemented her passion for communications by getting her
M.A. in Journalism at Emerson College in Boston. With her time at Emerson she anchored, reported and produced for one of the top college radio stations in the country, WERS 88.9 FM in Boston. She was even selected as one of 25 people for NBCUniversal’s Fellowship, working with NBC New York’s Storm Team 4. She worked three years as the weekend meteorologist and multimedia journalist at WBBJ in Jackson, Tennessee. There she covered everything from severe weather outbreaks, to historic river flooding before landing in Little Rock in 2020.

If you would like to get in touch with Corallys, you can contact Corallys by email at
[email protected] or connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok at @corallystv.