Ch 19's New Meteorologist

WXIX-TV's weather team will be up to full staffing by the end of June with the hiring of Christie Dutton from Lexington's WTVQ-TV (Channel 36). The Fox 19 weather staff has been minus a third person since Rich Apuzzo was fired in October.

Dutton, the morning and noon forecaster, has been at Channel 36 since 2001.

Dutton grew up in Nicholasville, just south of Lexington, and earned a journalism degree from UK. She started in TV at Channel 26 in 1999 as a news producer, then left to take an on-air reporting job at WKAG-TV in Hopkinsville, Ky. She did a fill-in weather stint there, which resulted in a career change.

She has a meteorology certificate from Mississippi State University, and seals of approval from the American Meteorological Society and National Weather Assocation.

THIS JUST IN: And since someone asked in a posting a few minutes ago if this means the end for fill-in Pat Barry, a former Ch 19 and Ch 5 weatherman, here's what Barry tells me: "I have a ton of nights through the first week of July. I'm working something like 22 of 40 nights. After July 7, I don't know when they might need me again."