A freshly minted Purdue University meteorologist was riding high after scoring a coveted on-air position straight out of college.
That ride ended abruptly when her corporate bosses showed her the door — and then scrubbed her digital footprint from existence.
Alex Kerkhove had been delivering forecasts for WTWO viewers in Terre Haute, Indiana since earning her degree last June.
The Nexstar-owned station gave her no warning runway. Management simply informed her the day had arrived, and it was her last.
What made the situation sting even more was what came next. The company deleted her Facebook page entirely, cutting her off from the very audience she had spent months cultivating.
Left without her professional platform, Kerkhove turned to her personal weather page to break the news herself. She was not going to let corporate silence be the only story told.
“This is an extremely difficult post to make. I am posting on my personal weather page because they deleted my FB,” she wrote Monday in a message that quickly spread far beyond Terre Haute.
Kerkhove did not sugarcoat what she had been told. Station management made their position plain — they “did not see a future” for her at WTWO. She had wanted to stay. That decision was not hers to make.
She acknowledged being unable to paint the full picture of what led to her exit. “Honestly, I can’t get into the weeds of what went on behind the scenes,” she wrote, keeping her disclosure measured and professional despite the circumstances.
The FTVLive newsletter first surfaced the story before Kerkhove’s own post sent it viral across platforms.
Once viewers found out, the reaction was anything but quiet. Hundreds of commenters descended on her post, channeling their frustration directly at the station that let her go.
“Shocked by this!” wrote one viewer. Another pulled no punches, stating the station “definitely made the wrong move.”
Supporters heaped praise on Kerkhove’s on-air skills, her natural forecasting instincts, and the easy rapport she had built alongside veteran meteorologist Jesse Walker during her months on the air.
The comment section filled with predictions that management would eventually look back on this decision with regret. Followers called her “amazing,” “talented,” and a “ray of sunshine” — words rarely used to describe someone a station should have been eager to discard.
Kerkhove also touched on something deeper than job titles and television markets.
Many viewers had rallied around her as a local success story, a young woman from modest roots who had made good.
She acknowledged that support directly, thanking those who had shown “such love to a Farm girl from West Lafayette.”
Whatever happened behind closed doors at WTWO, Kerkhove made one thing unmistakably clear — she is not finished.
“This obviously is not a goodbye,” she told her followers, promising to keep delivering weather updates, gardening posts, festival coverage, and historical weather facts to anyone willing to follow along.
Nexstar, one of the country’s largest operators of local television stations, has not responded publicly. The New York Post contacted both the company and Kerkhove seeking comment.
