DETROIT — Ginger Zee finds that people usually want to talk to her about the weather, and she's OK with it.

"The people closest to me are almost shy about it, because they don't want to intrude," says Zee, the chief meteorologist at ABC News and a sunny "Good Morning America" personality. "But then it'll be like my high school boyfriend, who I haven't talked to in forever, that will write me and he'll be like, 'Hey, can I have a two-week forecast? I'm going on a long trip.' Which I'm always happy to help with, but it's funny how those different layers or levels of weather talk change."

Zee, 44, was raised in Grand Rapids and worked at several Michigan TV stations before her career took her to Chicago and eventually New York, where she joined the "GMA" team in 2011.

She's since authored two memoirs, 2017's "Natural Disaster" and 2022's "A Little Closer to Home," as well as "Chasing Helicity," a trilogy of children's books. She also appeared on "Dancing with the Stars" in 2016, waltzing into third place in the competition, beating out the likes of Geraldo Rivera and "Full House's" Jodie Sweetin but dropping the Mirror Ball trophy to "America's Next Top Model's" Nyle DiMarco.

Zee — her TV name is shortened from Zuidgeest — is a prominent figure in the field of meteorology; she's #notaweathergirl, as her Instagram bio clearly states. We spoke to her on the phone from New York about Michigan, the challenges facing her industry and yes, the weather.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Your fascination with weather began when you were 9 years old and you were looking out at storms over Lake Michigan. What was it about them that grabbed you? What did you lock in on?

A: Part of it was the fear that I saw in my mom. She was like, "Oh gosh, we have to get in the basement." She's a protector. So I think the heightened alert by other people was interesting. But then I think because I spent the whole summer watching storms come from different directions, and sometimes they would look like they were gonna hit us and they wouldn't, that it was like a puzzle. And as a kid, I really loved putting together puzzles, and this was like there was a puzzle in the atmosphere. And I was already science-minded, so once I figured out that was something that you could diagnose, it just made sense. Like wow, I could be the person that helps to figure that out? Let's go!

Q: Your roots are here in Michigan, and you always give on-air shout-outs to Michigan when you can. How often do you get back to Michigan now, and what do you have to do when you're here?

A: It always has to be at least once a year. Most of the time it's summer, and I have to get in Lake Michigan. Like anybody that grew up on an ocean, you know, it's very much our ocean. And there's something, like, connecting to that water and to the sand that feels like home, and it feels the most grounded that I can be. I've been to a lot of places in the world and I've seen a lot of spectacular things, but I still put some of those beaches in my the top five. It's incredible. So I love just getting to that lakeshore, it doesn't matter where, but most of the time it's somewhere within driving distance of Grand Rapids, because that's usually where we're going to see family. And there's a coffee/bagel place called Herman's Boy, in Rockford, that is a regular stop. They've got a bagel dog, which is like a German hot dog with a bagel around it and a spicy mustard on it. It's so good! I've got my city boy husband, who is such a foodie, and he's like, "I love that spot."

Q: As heat waves and hurricanes hit so much of the U.S., some say Michigan is kind of geographically immune to so many of the weather issues facing us. As climate concerns continue to spiral, is Michigan the state of the future?

A: I've thought it was the state of the past, the present and the future! (Laughs.) I think that Michigan, because of its proximity to fresh water, has something that nobody else has, and something that is going to be incredibly attractive to the point of it being financially important and societally important. Meteorologically and climate-wise, it also moderates all of the weather, so that, in some ways, will help. There's going to be a decade or two, and we're just starting it, where the warmth and the latitudinal movement of these storms, and of the cold air, is going to produce more lake effects, so what's going to feel wrong in the warming world — "what, we're getting more snow?" — you're going to have that for a bit. We do get tornadoes, I don't want people to forget about that, and that won't stop. Wildfires, too: you have a sandy soil that can get into drought quickly, and we've seen it, if you look at the big Chicago fires. I just don't want people to forget it is possible. But overall, compared to other places on our planet and definitely in the United States, I'd say it's one of the havens, for sure.

Q: At the same time, Michigan just experienced its windiest weather on record in March, and a lot of the Midwest experienced near-record winds. What's going on with all the wind?

A: As we see the shift in the changes in our patterns, in general, our Earth is doing something that we haven't witnessed, not in record-keeping time, at least. And that natural shift is being amplified by our warming. So there's a lot of things that we're going to start seeing that we have not documented yet. So that windy March — it was actually the windiest on average for the whole nation, so Michigan was not alone — we just had a very dynamic spring. Spring is always dynamic, because you have a lot of warm-to-cold, a lot of big shifts. That was part of it, and part of it is the position of the jet stream. There's some research that shows the jet stream is getting more stuck, more often, and patterns are lasting longer. So we're gonna have to go back and do some climate attribution to see why and how this March was the way it was, but I think that will probably be a part of it.

Q: At the same time, there have been a lot of talks about cuts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and at NASA, where a lot of this weather data and research is collected and stored. Have you already seen changes, and what threats do these cuts pose to people?

A: I've done a couple of stories on it, because it is alarming. Since the 1950s, the United States has institutionalized the best weather network in the world. We really do have the best eyes on our weather, and that's because we have some of the most volatile, damaging, destructive and life-threatening weather in the world. So back in the 1950s, there's a history of why we started really putting emphasis on tornado forecasts, and then hurricane forecasts, because life, property and national security are all at stake here. Agriculture, the big stuff, the stuff that drives our lives and makes our society and our economy work, are based in this data that we've done so well for the last 75 to 100 years. To have a shift in that, and/or a pause or a cancellation of the data, it's like taking away a puzzle piece from the puzzle. And now you've got a hole, and you don't know what the final product looks like, and you won't. And that's scary, especially when it comes to tornadoes. As a scientist, more data is better, and less data does not help. And that's what I think we fear.

Q: What can people do to ensure these things are not taken away?

A: I have already written my representative, I've made phone calls. I really think we still have a voice. And I don't think that it's all nefarious, sometimes I think things fall through the cracks, or their importance is not understood. We've come so far in the 75 years that we've been really focusing on this, the last thing we want to do is go backward. You want your family to be safe, and most importantly, you want that information to be free. Who's to say what it's going to look like if you privatize this and then you have to pay for a tornado warning? What does that world look like? That's really scary. And people always make the hilarious joke, "oh, the weather is always wrong." It's not, guys. That's why you use it, and your app is using National Weather Service data. That is going to be worse, if not available, if some of the cuts happen. And so I hope people can understand the gravity of what we're talking about, about the thing that you take for granted every day, is that you have access to this information.

Q: You make a point to talk about this issue when and where you can. Do you feel like you're making your point heard? Do you feel like you're getting the word out?

A: I wish I could talk about it every single day, all day, because I think you need repetition for people to understand the gravity of it. And this isn't political, that's the thing, I'm not coming from a political place. We've gone through dozens and dozens of administrations that haven't touched weather forecasting or climate data and we've only, I think, kept growing. As a community, the American Meteorological Society, the National Weather Association, everybody's on the same side here, and it doesn't matter who they voted for. I think weather and data information and science supersedes politics, and I think it should. Weather is actually quite apolitical, and that's what I want to make sure people understand.

Q: On a personal level, how much do you know about where you're going to be day-to-day, week-to-week? You might suddenly be in Nevada tomorrow covering a story, or you might be in Iceland next week. How do you manage the unpredictability of your schedule?

A: That is something I talk to my therapist quite a bit about, because it's not something for everybody. I am a really flexible person, it's never been a strain. But once I've had to be responsible for a family, my children and my husband, it's definitely become a bit more of a strain. One story I tell that really shows you what it's like was I was at work, it was like 11:30 in the morning, and they said, "hey, do you think you could make a 2:30 flight to France? Because the wildfires are getting bad." And I was like, "huh, I have to get home, get my stuff, turn around, get like all my wildfire gear and get to JFK? Yeah, I'll do it." So it can be like that. And, for example, Monday and Tuesday next week look pretty volatile, it looks like tornadoes in Iowa on Monday, and we know this far out. So probably by Saturday, we'll make a decision if I go on Monday. So I have two days advance notice. But I know now there's a possibility, because I know the weather. [Ed. note: Zee was reporting from Minnesota on Tuesday.]

Q: Do you always have a backpack packed and ready to go?

A: I have several. I have different types: I have the wet bag if I know I'm going to get really wet, I have the fire bag, and then I've got the I'm-going-to-be-frozen bag. And then anything else I've got, I just add to it, but those are the base layers.

Q: There are some days when you're on "Good Morning America" in the morning and then you're also doing the evening news at night. What exactly are your hours?

A: There are times when I'm on remote and I'm on for six hours straight, and there's barely time to go to the restroom, let alone to get something to eat. It's demanding. But then you have slower days when the weather's quiet, and you can take a break between the two shows and you can workout, or do something human. So it all works. But at the end of the day, I love it, because if I didn't love it, I would not want to blow up my entire weekend to go to Birmingham, Alabama, to cover tornadoes. But I do, I genuinely still love putting together the puzzle that's the atmosphere, and I love having the responsibility of being able to communicate that to people, to realize how menacing weather can be, but also how prepared we can be for it. You do not have to be scared if you're prepared, and that's been my job the whole way through.

Q: Work aside, what's your favorite part about a storm? During a storm, might we catch you gazing up at the sky, like a Midwestern dad standing in the garage?

A: I still am in awe of, and I have a great respect for, our atmosphere. And I think that's what I get every time I see it. And really, my favorite time is when I've done my job, and it's a big enough storm that we lose our ability to broadcast, where I don't have to do that job and I can actually just watch, and be. That's only happened a couple times, in a Cat 5 and a Cat 4 hurricane, both of the times, but where I know that I'm not constantly having to produce and I can just take in the power of our world.

Q: Has there been a Hurricane Ginger?

A: There was, it was in 1970s, and it held the title of the longest-lived hurricane for the longest time. I forgot which one beat it, but it got beat out a couple of years back, and I was really disappointed. Because I was like, you know, I love being the longest lived! That means I'll have a long life.

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