Leslie Santibañez-Molina
Leslie Santibañez-Molina is a weekend weather anchor and multimedia journalist at KSBY News, focusing on how shifting weather and environmental conditions affect daily life and local decision-making. She combines detailed short-term forecasts with reporting on preparedness, infrastructure and policy, keeping her coverage rooted in what residents need to know to navigate heat, storms and other hazards. Her work spans on-air forecasts and digital stories, including bilingual weather segments, which allows her to carry environmental information to a broad local audience.
Heat, short-term forecasts and daily impacts
Much of Santibañez-Molina’s coverage centers on heat and day-to-day weather patterns, with a recurring focus on when temperatures will peak and when relief will arrive. In “Temperatures peak Wednesday, warm conditions continue through weekend,” she walks audiences through above-average midweek heat, then marks Sunday as the turning point when cooler conditions begin, clearly flagging the transition for planning outdoor activities. Her forecasts routinely frame changes over a few days - such as hot conditions continuing into Sunday with only slight cooling from Saturday or cooler temperatures expected for the weekend after several days of heat - so that readers understand not just the current number on the thermometer but the trend.
She often notes marine and coastal concerns alongside temperature outlooks, reinforcing that local weather is a combination of heat, marine layer and coastal winds rather than a single number.
These pieces run under “Today’s Forecast” and similar labels, but their tone is explanatory rather than conversational, with clear breakdowns of what to expect on specific days of the week. She highlights short-lived cool-downs and warming trends, flagging when a brief respite from heat will quickly give way to another warm stretch. By spelling out the sequence - when temperatures will rise, plateau and fall - she turns routine forecast updates into practical planning tools for people balancing work, school and outdoor events.
El Niño, flooding and readiness
Santibañez-Molina extends her environmental coverage beyond temperature into storm preparedness, especially around El Niño and flooding risk. In her piece on San Luis Obispo County launching a task force as residents prepare for potential El Niño flooding, she lays out how multiple county departments - emergency services, law enforcement, fire, public works and social services - are coordinating ahead of anticipated storms. She explains new infrastructure checks and planning efforts, then shifts to concrete guidance for residents, including signing up for alert systems, developing family emergency plans, assembling kits and cleaning gutters.
The story closes in on neighborhood-level action by describing people clearing excess vegetation that could wash into properties during flooding, grounding the county’s strategy in specific, lived examples.
Her coverage of El Niño also touches on how public agencies adjust long-term projects to account for storm risk, such as splitting building demolition into phases due to El Niño concerns. Taken together, these pieces show a consistent approach: she links climate patterns to operational decisions by local governments and then to household-level steps, keeping environmental reporting anchored in what institutions and individuals actually do in response.
Wildfire risk and defensible space
Wildfire preparedness is another recurring strand in her environment beat, captured in coverage of defensible space inspections for Santa Barbara County homeowners. In that reporting, she outlines the start of county inspections, emphasizing requirements for residents to clear brush and maintain defensible space around homes in high-risk areas. The focus is not on abstract fire risk but on the practical interface between homeowners and fire authorities: what inspections entail, when they begin, and how property owners need to adjust their landscaping and maintenance. By foregrounding the inspection program and its timelines, she again ties environmental hazards directly to compliance and behavior at the household level.
Energy, policy and local infrastructure
Santibañez-Molina frequently situates environmental issues within broader energy and policy debates.
In her coverage of a public forum on the future of Diablo Canyon Power Plant, she reports on scientists, economists and residents weighing how extended operations of the nuclear facility could affect surrounding counties. The story highlights the mix of technical expertise and community voices, indicating an interest in how large energy decisions intersect with local environmental and economic concerns. Her report on California governor hopefuls debating on CNN similarly tracks climate change as a central campaign issue, noting candidates’ contrasting energy policies and their positions on offshore drilling and domestic oil production.
By bringing these statewide and national debates into her local newsroom’s coverage, she threads environment and climate policy into everyday political reporting.
Her work also covers transportation and infrastructure, such as Highway 101 construction in Pismo Beach aimed at easing future traffic, reflecting attention to how long-term projects reshape mobility and daily life along the Central Coast. Beyond environment-specific stories, she handles local governance and community issues, including new liquor licenses becoming available for the first time in more than a decade, closing arguments in an election fraud trial, a damaged community bus stop and concerns over proposed federal changes to Head Start programs.
These pieces show her range across policy, courts and social services, but still align with a broader pattern: she tracks how public decisions and infrastructure shifts affect residents’ routines and opportunities.
Across weather segments and local news reports, Santibañez-Molina’s through-line is cause-and-effect: heat waves, El Niño patterns, wildfire risk, energy policy and infrastructure projects are framed in terms of what agencies will do and what residents should expect next. Her bilingual weathercasting and dual role as anchor and reporter give her room to explain those connections both on air and in writing, reinforcing a consistent, impact-driven approach to environment coverage.
4 more environment journalists.
Alan Halaly
Alan Halaly is a water reporter at the Las Vegas Review-Journal who treats the Colorado River as a working system, not a backdrop, making its governance, infrastructure and risks central to his beat. He covers how policy decisions and infrastructure projects shape the region’s water future, linking high-level choices on the Colorado River, dams, mining and data centers to everyday consequences under mounting heat and growth pressures. He reports deeply on new laws, lawsuits and regulatory shifts, focusing on on-the-ground impacts. His coverage spans Colorado River cuts, Hoover Dam operations, extreme weather, heat and parks, septic system rules, workplace and public health risks, lithium and gold mines, protected landscapes, data centers, AI infrastructure and public funding. Previously he reported for metropolitan dailies, digital outlets and public media, including the Miami Herald, WUFT, The Daily Beast and Miami New Times, with work recognized by Hearst, ONA and the Society of Environmental Journalists.
Alejandra Borunda
Alejandra Borunda reports on how climate change affects human health for NPR. Her work treats global warming as a direct cause of physical and mental health risks. She covers extreme heat, including undercounted deaths, lost sleep and local efforts to track heat-related fatalities. She also reports on wildfire smoke, hurricanes, disease spread such as dengue fever, trauma, stress and unequal health impacts. Her stories examine how communities protect themselves and recover, as well as practical solutions involving climate-resilient crops, agriculture and diet. Before NPR, she wrote about climate science and environmental issues for National Geographic, including glacier retreat, shade and heat inequity, and shrinking ice-fishing seasons. A former climate scientist, she combines field reporting with scientific data to connect atmospheric research to everyday risks, choices and people’s lived experiences.
Alex Lubben
Alex Lubben is an environment reporter at The Times-Picayune/The Advocate who connects climate risk to policy, industry and community change. He covers Gulf warming, flood protection, coastal restoration, wetlands litigation, industrial projects such as SpaceX’s possible expansion, invasive species and local ecosystems. His reporting tracks how law, politics and corporate decisions shape levees, drainage, marshes and long-term resilience. He also examines climate relocation, housing and labor, showing how hurricanes, floods and wildfires displace vulnerable communities and expose gaps in government systems. He works on a small environment team and brings an investigative background to document work, data analysis, legal and policy research, and field reporting. His work has appeared in VICE News, The Center for Public Integrity, The Nation, Jewish Currents and NBC News.
Alex Wigglesworth
Alex Wigglesworth reports on how climate, land use and public policy shape California communities. She covers the Inland Empire and Mojave Desert for the Los Angeles Times and is part of its environment team. Her beat includes wildfires, megadrought, extreme weather, desert development, conservation, wildlife, industrial hazards, aging infrastructure and regulatory enforcement. She has covered Western Joshua trees, desert tortoises, beaver-led restoration, toxic lead pipes, air-quality concerns after industrial fires and the effects of nuclear war on food systems. Earlier, she was a general assignment reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News and Philly.com. She combines breaking news with detailed reporting grounded in scientific studies, modeling and expert interviews. Her work connects fires, drought and other hazards to climate change, while examining how agencies, companies and land-use decisions affect people and ecosystems.