Until recently, Ashley Rowe had been lured to Buffalo only to shop on Black Friday and to work when it was blanketed in white.

That was November 2014, when Rowe was soaring overhead in a CTV news helicopter reporting on the gruelling blizzard that buried the city in up to 7 feet of snow, trapping motorists, collapsing roofs and killing more than 14 people.

Even 500 feet in the air, Rowe was moved by the city’s resolve.

“Imagine seeing a family of people on the roof of their home shovelling snow off,” she recalled. “They didn’t even need a ladder to get down, because there was so much snow they could slide off.

“One thing I did learn was the strength and the grit of Buffalonians.”

Well, Rowe is one of them now: this week, she assumes the co-anchor position on WKBW-TV’s three evening newscasts. And here, again, there is some digging out to do.

The ABC-affiliated Channel 7 was sold to E.W. Scripps Company almost two years ago, and change has been the constant since. WKBW-TV vice-president and general manager Michael Nurse says the newsroom has been through a “total reboot” from a “staffing, technical and promotional perspective.”

Rowe replaces Joanna Pasceri on a newscast that ranks a distant third behind NBC-affiliated Channel 2 and the CBS-tied Channel 4, according to ratings published in the Buffalo News.

Nurse considers hiring Rowe away from one of the continent’s biggest media markets a “coup.” When her New York-based agent sent her reel to WKBW execs, they found her a “unique combination of warm and smart,” Nurse said.

“We’re not looking at her to be the saviour,” he said. “We’re looking at her to be a fresh face. (After) all the changes we made, I think it was time to change the faces. So if people are flipping around, they realize it’s not your father’s Channel 7.

“And to find someone with journalism running through her blood,” he added, “we’re thrilled to have her.”

Indeed, Rowe’s grandfather was a journalist and her father is renowned Canadian documentarian Peter Rowe (her mother, meanwhile, is a real-estate agent and the “saint and machine” who powered her daughter’s hyperefficient recent move). Born in Los Angeles, Rowe lived for a time in South Africa while her father directed the Robert Mitchum-Catherine Bach adventure series African Skies before the family settled in Mississauga.

Over four-plus years at CTV, Rowe was a member of the media corps camping outside Rob Ford’s office. She was also among the first journalists on the scene of the 2012 Eaton Centre food-court shooting, when she hopped out of a cab en route to a Dave Matthews concert to interview witnesses on her iPhone (missing the show).

Like many southern Ontarians, Rowe grew up watching Buffalo TV: “As soon as I tell people I’m joining WKBW, they say: ‘the home of Irv Weinstein!’ ” She’s renting an apartment in a “gorgeous” 19th-century building, and now has a travel agent’s enthusiasm for the city, boasting about its food, architecture and rapid redevelopment.

She says she doesn’t feel the pressure of engineering a ratings comeback.

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“I’m not too worried about making Channel 7 Eyewitness News No. 1 again. I’m interested in telling the stories of Buffalo,” she said.

“I’m amazed by this city,” she added later. “There’s a lot more to Buffalo than the Walden Galleria mall and chicken wings.”