Weather, Screens, and Family: The Life and Work of Cindy Preszler

Cindy Preszler’s career reads like a map of American weather: long stretches of steady service, sudden bursts of high drama, and a steady hand guiding viewers through storms both literal and figurative. She spent more than four decades on camera, building a reputation as a meticulous forecaster, a local institution in St. Louis, and later a familiar face in Miami. Alongside her professional footprint sits a quieter, garden-variety family life — husband, in-law celebrations, cousins, and the small human moments that showed up in social media posts and farewell broadcasts. This article lays out the factual shape of that life: dates, roles, family names that appear publicly, and the milestones that measure a meteorological life.

Basic Facts

Career and achievements

Cindy Preszler’s résumé is a steady climb across markets and platforms. She broke into national cable meteorology with The Weather Channel in the late 1980s and early 1990s — a period that rounded out the first era of her career. From there she moved through a series of local-market roles, landing in St. Louis at KSDK in October 1998. For 18 years she anchored the weather desk there as chief meteorologist, becoming a familiar weekday presence: the person viewers turned to for severe-weather alerts, holiday-sequence forecasts, and the quiet daily ritual of checking the skies.

Numbers matter in a life of broadcast credibility. The timeline includes:

• ~1987–1992 — On-air at The Weather Channel (national cable exposure, early career development).
• October 1998 — Joined KSDK (St. Louis).
• 1998–2016 — Chief meteorologist at KSDK (18 years).
• December 2016 — Launched WeatherSTL.com and operated Preszler Productions.
• September 2022 — Joined WFOR-CBS Miami.
• ~September 2024 — Announced retirement after roughly 42 years in the business.

Her honors punctuate the timeline: five regional Emmy awards (with additional nominations), recognition from press and broadcaster associations, and the professional seals that indicate both technical competence and peer review — the American Meteorological Society Seal and the National Weather Association Seal. She also served in leadership roles within industry circles (for example, participation in AMS broadcast conference activities), and was noted in various bios for on-air firsts and hurricane coverage earlier in her career.

A concise table of roles and dates:

Family and personal life — what is publicly evident

Public social posts and on-air remarks give the clearest window into Cindy Preszler’s personal life without straying into rumor. The most unambiguous relationship she has identified in public posts is her marriage to Dave Mack — she marks anniversaries, birthdays, and refers to him as husband in social captions. Beyond that, her social feeds show a tapestry of extended-family moments: wedding celebrations, newborn announcements, and backyard gatherings that name several relatives.

Names that appear repeatedly in public posts include:

• Dave Mack — husband.
• Gabrielle Mack — referenced explicitly as sister-in-law in at least one public post.
• Steve & Sheri; Kay & Phil; Caleb & Abby — named in family-gathering posts; presented in social captions as cousins or extended family.
• Sienna Preszler — referenced as “newest addition” in family photos.

A responsible portrait must note limits. Local obituaries and genealogy pages list older Preszler family members from Menno and the Yankton, South Dakota area; however, those records do not, in themselves, constitute authoritative proof that the meteorologist is directly connected to any specific obituary entry. Public posts anchor the contemporary relationships (husband, sister-in-law, cousins), while genealogical connections to older generations remain publicly unverified.

The independent chapter: WeatherSTL and Preszler Productions

Leaving a longterm anchor post at a major local affiliate is a pivot that many broadcast personalities approach cautiously. Preszler did more than pause: she launched an independent site and production presence. WeatherSTL.com went live in December 2016 as a locally focused weather resource; Preszler Productions became the brand under which she packaged on-demand forecasts, specialty video, and freelance work. That move reads like a seam in the career map: from institutional newsroom to boutique, locally centered media.

Running an independent weather site and production company is both technical and entrepreneurial. It requires editorial discipline, a backup of reporting horsepower, and a shift in the relationship to viewers — from appointment viewing to on-demand connection. The numbers here are modest but significant: operating a site and production company for several years after nearly two decades at a network affiliate.

Recent years, video presence, and retirement broadcasts

Her move to WFOR-CBS Miami in September 2022 placed her in a new regional climate and newsroom culture. Broadcast clips from that era, farewell segments from late summer 2024, and a series of social goodbyes mark the closing chapter of her on-air life. Video presence is extensive: archival clips from The Weather Channel, KSDK forecasts, WeatherSTL uploads, and CBS-Miami segments populate public video platforms. Those clips show a practised broadcaster — concise with data, steady under pressure, and prone to the small human beats that make television weather feel like a neighbor’s voicemail.

Publicly announced retirement around September 2024 caps a roughly 42-year professional arc. The final broadcasts carried the familiar rituals of television: taped tributes, on-air thank-you notes, snapshots of family in the gallery, and a few off-camera moments posted later on social media.

A portrait in practical metaphors

If a meteorologist’s career can be read like a weather map, Cindy Preszler’s life shows long ridges of stability and occasional fronts of change. The long tenure in St. Louis was the warm, dependable high pressure: steady, predictable, and community-anchoring. The independent WeatherSTL chapter was a gust of entrepreneurial wind — smaller in scale but rich in intent. Miami was the thunderhead: intense, bright, and closing the arc with a dramatic, public farewell.

Her public family moments — anniversary captions, cousin-filled cookouts, newborn photos — are the domestic microclimates that appear on social radar: small, warm, and human. They remind viewers that the person who reads the barometric pressure also roots for backyard graduations and birthday cakes. The names that surface publicly form the human chorus behind the broadcasts: a husband, an in-law, cousins, and a youngest generation joining the family fold.