Meteorologist Matt Devitt and family. (Photo: Facebook)
On Saturday, Jan. 10, Matt Devitt, chief meteorologist at WINK TV in Fort Myers, Fla., published a Facebook post that unleashed a hurricane as strong as any he covered in his ten years at the station.
“LIFE UPDATE: After 10 years, my time with WINK News has come to an end after being let go from my role as Chief Meteorologist on Thursday. This decision was not one that I expected or agreed with and was not given the opportunity to say goodbye on-air. It was a complete shock to me, my family and fellow coworkers.”
Since that announcement it’s fair to say that Southwest Florida has erupted in speculation, accusations and equally complete shock.
An outside observer might be puzzled by all this. But that observer needs to realize that in Southwest Florida, broadcast weather forecasters play a special role. They’re not just on-air presenters: amidst the drama and stress of hurricanes they’re foxhole buddies who know incoming from outgoing rounds and can tell you when to duck; they’re pillars of calm despite fearsome storms and howling winds; they’re guides who lead the way to safety and sunlight. Local people who come through a hurricane feel as though they shared the danger with the meteorologists who were continuously on television throughout the ordeal.
They’re not just talent, they’re weather gods.
Matt Devitt was an outstanding example of the breed.
Southwest Floridians are flooding social media with posts and opinions about the dismissal. The story has gone far beyond the confines of the local viewing area and is being covered by such national and international news outlets as Newsweek, The Hindustan Times in India and The Daily Mail in Britain.
It has also taken on a political dimension, shaking the race for Congress in the 19th Congressional District, the coastal area from Cape Coral to Marco Island.
The story continues to develop and breaking news could come at any time.
However, while things may change, this article is intended to provide background and context, to analyze the nature and intensity of the controversy, and to explain to the world why this event is is a cyclone in what is usually a very hot and sleepy corner of America.
What we know
There are only two authoritative sources of information on this story: Matt Devitt and the person who fired him; or in terms of facing the public, WINK TV. Neither are talking. (The Paradise Progressive reached out to both without result.)
Since Devitt was the one who broke the story, here is the rest of the post he put on Facebook:
“Serving our Southwest Florida community for the past decade has been an honor and privilege, especially through Hurricanes Irma, Ian, Helene and Milton. I always gave you everything I had with one goal in mind: keeping you safe and informed without the hype.
“While this chapter ended differently than I hoped, I wish WINK News, along with my previous coworkers and weather team, the best.
“I will still be providing weather updates on this page, it just won’t be on TV anymore. My new Facebook name is being changed to Matt Devitt Weather, which you’ll see shortly. In addition to sending Facebook messages, you are always welcome to email me at MattDevittWX@gmail.com.
“I'm taking a brief pause professionally to reset and be with my family. I’ve missed them and I’m looking forward to every minute. I’ll keep you all updated on what’s next.
“Thank you to everyone who has reached out with support, it has meant more to me than you know.”
There has been no official statement from WINK. Indeed, an internal memo was circulated warning WINK personnel not to discuss or comment on the matter in any form or forum, on any platform, on the telephone or in any way whatsoever. There has not been any broadcast comment from the station.
The one comment that came out was from WINK meteorologist Lauren Kreidler, who also posted on Facebook: “Please give my weather team & I grace as we navigate this change ourselves… I did not have any involvement in this decision.”
The players
Matt Devitt in 2021. (Photo: Facebook)
Matt Devitt is a Florida native. A long time weather watcher, in 2004 he was a student intern at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for four months, according to his LinkedIn biography. He attended Pennsylvania State University starting in 2006, interning at WFLA-TV in Tampa in 2008.
The following year he worked as a researcher at the National Science Foundation where he was part of a project titled “Evaluation of Community Emergency Response Teams in Hillsborough County, Florida: A Pilot Study.”
“The centerpiece of the program was an intensive, interdisciplinary research experience where I actively engaged in a faculty-mentored research project focused on hurricane hazards and social vulnerabilities of individuals and communities,” he wrote on his page. “As a capstone experience, I showcased my research project at a university-community symposium held at the end of the nine-week session.
After graduation in 2010 Devitt worked for 10 months as an on-air meteorologist at KTEN-TV in Denison, Texas, moved to KHBS-TV in Rogers, Ark., for a year and then was at WSAV-TV in Savannah, Ga., for nearly four years.
He came to WINK in February 2016, initially as morning meteorologist and then moving up to Chief Meteorologist in March 2021.
WINK TV, the station where Devitt was employed, is the oldest television station in Southwest Florida and the fifth oldest in the state. (Figures on its audience and reach are not publicly available.)
The station was founded by Arthur “Mickey” McBride, a tycoon who started the Cleveland Browns football team. McBride was born in Chicago but made his fortune in Cleveland where he worked his way up from a job as circulation manager for the Cleveland News, organizing the newspaper’s newsboys in their often-violent battles for territory. He branched out into real estate and taxicab companies.
In 1946 McBride bought Fort Myers’ first radio station, WINK, and then expanded it into television. It began broadcasting on March 18, 1954.
Today the station is still owned by the McBride family through their Fort Myers Broadcasting Company. It has a shared services agreement with other broadcasters like Sun Broadcasting, a Univision channel and others.
WINK TV had to evacuate its studio in September 2022 when it was flooded during Hurricane Ian. It began broadcasting from a shared broadcast center in north Fort Myers.
In March 2024 the station elevated Jamie Ricks to general manager. He started as a local sales manager at WINK in 2007 and rose to director of sales in 2024 before becoming general manager.
Jamie Ricks (Photo: LinkedIn)
There have been big and sometimes jarring changes at WINK in the last two years. From a physical standpoint, it moved its news operations into a brand new and revamped studio at a new location in the community of Gateway, in central Lee County, about ten miles east of its previous Broadcast Center. The change was announced on Tuesday, Jan. 13.
Stormy bonds
The weather itself plays a role in this drama.
For those unfamiliar with it, Southwest Florida is officially a near-tropical climate (Zone 10B in the Department of Agriculture Plant Hardiness scale). It has two seasons: wet and dry.
The dry season runs roughly from November to April. The weather is relatively monotonous; there’s little rain, almost constant sunshine and at most some temperature variation as different fronts come through. It often ends with droughts, water restrictions and wildfires.
The wet season runs roughly from April to November. As the summer wears on there are near-daily thunderstorms, sometimes severe.
But what really makes the wet season wet are the tropical storms and hurricanes that usually blow in from the Gulf of Mexico or across the peninsula from the Atlantic. Hurricane season officially begins June 1 and ends on Nov. 30.
(Editor’s Note: The latest Trump-appointed director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, David Richardson, said when he took office that he was unaware that there was an official hurricane season.)
Southwest Florida is a climatologically sensitive region and very vulnerable to damage from extreme weather events. It has been repeatedly battered by catastrophic storms, none more so in recent years than 2022’s Hurricane Ian.
As a result, weather, even in the dry season, is a major preoccupation in the region and that’s reflected in its broadcast TV stations. The two major stations, WINK and WBBH (NBC2) and WZVN (ABC7) (the latter two combined as Gulf Coast News by Hearst Television) usually lead off their evening newscasts with weather reports, even in calm times.
As an indication of the importance of weather in the area, in 1994 NBC2 and ABC7 joined together to invest in their own Doppler radar, which was upgraded in 2021. In 2022 WINK countered by upgrading its own radar to Doppler 3X, which, as it never tires of repeating, is three times more powerful and accurate than its competitor.
Both of these were major investments to provide greater accuracy for weather forecasts.
The primacy of weather is also reflected in the robust and extensive meteorological teams of the stations. Both stations employ numerous knowledgeable and very professional meteorologists.
Allyson Rae is the chief meteorologist at Gulf Coast News, as Devitt was at WINK.
Especially when hurricanes threaten or hit the region, the teams go into emergency, around-the-clock mode. The reports are constant and the reporting takes on life and death urgency as viewers watch for evacuation orders and emergency announcements.
Devitt was especially good at this. In 2022 during Hurricane Ian, with the WINK studio flooding, he stood at a laptop on a stand with what looked like a single spotlight on him, calmly providing real time reports of flooding, tidal surge, and especially destructive rotating winds on a street-by-street basis.
(On a personal note: During Ian, this author and his wife watched him report on a rotation nearing our neighborhood, giving street-by-street coordinates as it hovered nearby and we prepared to take shelter. Mercifully, our home was spared.)
That kind of immediate, frightening, life-and-death reporting and forecasting forges a bond between a weather forecaster and the audience that goes well beyond the usual talking heads on television.
In addition to his coolness and competence under pressure, Devitt was otherwise a jovial and often-humorous presence both in his weather reports and his social media postings, which were considerable on a wide array of platforms. He shared insights, unusual weather phenomena and encouraged audience input with photos and alerts.
It all built a friendly, immediate and trusted persona that made him the highest rated weather presenter in the market and boosted WINK ratings.
These are some of the reasons that his firing came as such a shock in Southwest Florida and why the reaction has been so emotional.
Shock, dismay and anger
Reaction to Devitt’s announcement was immediate and overwhelming. Mostly, it expressed itself in social media postings and comments and the dominant moods were dismay and alarm.
It even expressed itself in petitions to reinstate him. One petition on Change.org to “Bring back Matt Devitt to Wink weather,” had 2,956 signatures as of this writing. A second one, “Reinstate Matt Devitt as a weather forecaster” had 107.
The other reaction was powerful curiosity over the cause of the firing, which neither Devitt nor WINK provided. As a result, the event was like a Rorschach blot that anyone could interpret.
One social media commenter guessed that the cause was a January 6 Facebook post from Devitt that pointed out the rising heat in Southwest Florida, accompanied by a chart.
“NEW: Data is in for 2025 and it shows it was the 10th hottest on record for the city of Fort Myers in Southwest Florida. Data goes back to 1902 (123 years). With that said, the past 7 years straight have all been in the Top 10 hottest.
Yes, it can still get occasionally cool or cold at times during hot years. It's about *average* temperature over 365 days.
There are several contributing factors to the warmth in recent years. One of the most obvious that I'm sure you see all the time is the rapid development of Southwest Florida. If you replace cooler grass and trees with asphalt, concrete and buildings, materials that absorb heat, you're expanding the urban heat island. As a reminder, I don't do politics on this page. That's just the pure physics of the situation. We'll see what 2026 has in store ahead, I'll keep you posted.”
The chart accompanying Matt Devitt’s Jan. 6 Facebook post. (Chart: Facebook)
Given debates over overdevelopment as well as the controversy over climate change and the state government’s determination to ignore it, there was speculation that Devitt was being punished for even cursorily acknowledging what President Donald Trump has called a “hoax.”
However, a much more detailed and credible theory came from Beach Talk Radio, an online news station and website based in Fort Myers Beach.
Citing what it called “rock-solid sources inside the WINK-TV building,” the station made the following post on Facebook:
“BREAKING:
“Our rock-solid sources inside the WINK-TV building have confirmed that Matt Devitt was fired with 2 months left on his 5-year contract. He was given 3 weeks severance after nearly 10 years of outstanding weather reporting to the Southwest Florida region.
“The reason Matt was fired, from what we are told, was because the new boss did not like that he was taking extra time during his dinner breaks to help his wife with their newborn baby. He even requested to come into work earlier so he could go home earlier and that was denied (his shift was 2:30PM to midnight). The suits expected a one hour dinner break to be no longer than one hour. They called what Matt did insubordination, a violation of his contract, dragged him into the GM's office and fired him on the spot last Thursday. He has a non-compete agreement for one year.
“Maybe Matt should go back and add up all the extra hours he put in during all of those hurricanes and see what the boss has to say about that.”
Fury and politics
The Beach Talk Radio report sparked fury from one notable Southwest Florida viewer who posted on X: “If this report is true the entire WINK senior management should be fired and matt devitt [sic] reinstated with back pay.”
That was retired US House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who lives in the Quail West development of Naples.
As Devitt stated in his Jan. 6 Facebook posting, “As a reminder, I don't do politics on this page.” But that didn’t stop the Devitt affair from immediately going political and the place where it erupted was in the crowded District 19 congressional race.
The electoral politicking began with X posts by one of the Republican candidates, Catalina Lauf. Responding to Gingrich’s puzzlement over the firing, she wrote on Jan. 11: “I have the answer, sir! @newtgingrich “My primary opponent, Jim owns WINK. It’s clear in SWFL that he is a RINO hack, possibly a closet DEM. His liberal leadership fired the beloved @MattDevittWX who brought so much hope to SWFL during Hurricane Ian.”
Catalina Lauf (Photo: Campaign)
The “Jim” is Jim Schwartzel who owns Sun Broadcasting, which shares facilities with WINK. Schwartzel is also running for the Republican nomination in District 19.
Jim Schwartzel (Photo: Author)
Schwartzel has never claimed any ownership in WINK and he was moved to issue his own denial on X:
“For political reasons, some are circulating the false claims that I own or control WINK News.
“I want to be clear: I do not own WINK TV or WINK News. I am not employed by WINK and I have no role in its parent company, Fort Myers Broadcasting Co.
“I own Sun Broadcasting Inc., which owns and operates 92.5 FOX News radio, 93.7 Trump Country radio, as well as other radio and media properties.
“Any statement to the contrary is either misinformed or a deliberate lie.”
Beach Talk Radio responded to the statement:
“Thank you Jim for pointing out the obvious but everyone in Southwest Florida with a brain knows how the radio station, WINK-TV and The CW are all intertwined. You carry WINK News on the CW for crying out loud. WINK does the weather on YOUR radio station. What you did not deny in your post was that you were in on the firing of Matt. Were you or were you not one of the 3-4 people that knew it was coming down even before Matt did? If you have nothing to do with WINK why would you be in that loop? Post that denial so the local voters know. Or, if you did know, and gave your OK, just be honest with the voters and tell them you OK'd Matt being fired so they know when they vote in the pimary. The people you are asking to vote for you have a right to know. This isn't about politics. It's about honesty.”
As of this writing, there had not been a response by Schwartzel.
(For full coverage of the District 19 race, see: “Seaside stampede: Nine Republicans jostle in race for Florida’s District 19 nomination.”)
Analysis: Hurricane Matt
Until Devitt or WINK break their silence, there is no authoritative account of the actual reasons for the firing and everything else is speculation, no matter how seemingly informed. No doubt lawyers on both sides have imposed an absolute cone of silence over all the principals. Readers and viewers should be very skeptical of everything they read and hear.
If indeed the fight was over Devitt taking over an hour for dinner, one can put forward a theory—and this needs to be emphasized, a theory—of the nuts and bolts of the dispute.
Devitt lives in Babcock Ranch and when WINK moved its studio ten miles eastward to Gateway, there was no way Devitt could get home in time for dinner with his family and return to the studio in one hour. If he tried, he’d only be able to ring the doorbell before having to turn around and head back. Given his schedule, he’d never again have a weekday dinner with his family or see his newborn in the evening except on weekends. It’s a dilemma every working parent can recognize.
But outsiders can only speculate. There may have been other issues of pay, contracts, interpersonal relationships, a purge of older employees and all the other myriad irritants and issues that make up life in the workplace today.
What is undeniable is that by doing this without grace or manners or consideration for viewers or any public explanation, WINK management really shot itself in the foot—and possibly somewhere else more painful. Did they really think the firing wouldn’t come to light? That this disappearance wouldn’t be noticed?
In response to the firing, people are turning off the station and deleting its application from their mobile devices and announcing it on social media. For all its promotion of its listening tours, WINK doesn’t seem to be listening when its viewers really have something to say. There is absolutely no doubt that revenue is going to take a big hit, along with ratings.
But at least it’s a near-guarantee that no one at WINK will take more than an hour for dinner. It’s a win if one wants to count it that way.
The political responses seem crude and stupid. Schwartzel doesn’t have ownership of WINK and unless Lauf can document and prove her accusations they should be ignored (and writing as a liberal progressive, he’s no Dem!). And if Beach Talk Radio has the goods—even though its details are impressive—it should get its source (or sources) to go on the record.
There are also likely larger reasons for the angst and anger over Devitt’s firing.
The assault on the media has finally hit home in Southwest Florida with the arbitrary dismissal of a trusted and even loved on-air personality. At the national level CBS, WINK’s network, has seen its news operation eviscerated by its new editor in chief, Barri Weiss, who is clamping a Trumpist hood over its operations and killing its credibility. Even in entertainment, the network will dismiss comedian Stephen Colbert and end The Late Show altogether in May in deference to Donald Trump’s hatred and pettiness.
But more, the general atmosphere of fear and threat and menace, with arbitrary snatches and killings in the streets, raids by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, a concentration camp just down the road in the Everglades and creeping and relentless authoritarianism is like the atmosphere of danger and menace as a hurricane approaches, its winds blowing and its clouds lowering and its mortal danger becoming ever more apparent. People are tightly wound, tense and worried.
Perhaps that’s why when a television personality whom so many Southwest Floridians see as a friend, a guide and a guardian, someone trusted and reliable in the worst storms, is suddenly snatched away, it’s a shuddering shock that goes well beyond just the usual round of on-air personnel changes.
This story is only beginning. If WINK managers thought it would fade away they are much mistaken. It will all depend on the principals, of course, and their decisions. Devitt has to make known what he intends to do. WINK can maintain its silence but it will come at growing costs.
Like any hurricane, it’s not until the winds die down and the waters recede that the real damage will be known. But also like any hurricane, it will take a long time for all to revive and recover—and that’s not something that can be done with a wink.
Matt Devit reporting during Hurricane Ian, 2022 (Image: YouTube/WINK)
Liberty lives in light
© 2026 by David Silverberg