The "Grand-Daddy" of Tropical Forecasting Re-Visit

[Sean in New Orleans]

Talkin Tropics...The "Father," of hurricane forecasting, who resides in Metairie, LA speaks...He's now 88, and still seems as sharp as ever, but, has acquired the wise sense of humor that comes with age...

On the Air
The one that got him away

It was a storm so big that Nash Roberts evacuated for the first time ever. The legendary weatherman recalls Katrina, reflects on life off the air, and shares his optimism for the city's future.

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

By Dave Walker
Nash Roberts says it was a joke on his block: During a hurricane threat, neighbors would wait for his wife's car to leave before they'd evacuate.

And here's the punch line: It never happened.

"Everybody in my neighborhood knew that I would be down at the studio or at my weather office during all of these emergencies," said Roberts, who five years ago this month retired from hurricane duty at WWL-Channel 4 after a legendary decades-long local weathercasting career. "I left my wife at home, and she rode out every one of them right here. I wouldn't have let that happen if I thought it was dangerous. The story in the neighborhood was, 'I'm staying here unless I look out the window and Lydia's car is gone. If Nash tells Lydia to leave, we're all leaving.' "

Roberts, of course, never left either.

The stubbornly simple presentation tools, hurricane forecasting track record -- dogging Audrey, Betsy, Camille, Georges and many others -- and awesome tenure on the New Orleans airwaves made him more than a living legend.

Nash Roberts was Your Weather Authority before the phrase was a mere marketing hook.

He was the seer of sheer, the wazir of steering currents, the lord of landfall predictions.

And he never left.

Until Hurricane Katrina.

"For the first time in 60 years, I evacuated," he said. "I was pretty sure the thing was coming in here. What convinced me that I better get out was the fact that I knew it was going to be a wet system. It was huge in size, driving a lot of water ahead of it. With my wife, with the condition she's in, I said, 'We'd better get out of here.' "

The one that got him away...

So they did, to Baton Rouge, for two months.

"We didn't have any phones, no electricity, no nothing here," he said. "I didn't want to come back until we had everything."

After a half-century of weathercasting on New Orleans TV and, on the side, weather consulting for Gulf Coast oil-and-gas pumpers, Roberts announced his official full retirement from WWL-Channel 4 in July 2001.

Though he'd been used only for hurricane coverage for more than a decade before that, the retirement announcement was front-page news, and seemed targeted at viewers who'd believe nobody else. They wouldn't be able to hang their fate exclusively on Nash's storm track. Not even The Big One would bring him back.

Roberts, then 83, was retiring to tend to his ailing wife, Lydia, who requires 24-hour care.

Said WVUE-Channel 8 competitor Bob Breck: "Making the choice to give up the business that he loves for the woman that he loves -- it's a beautiful love story."

Which is exactly what Roberts has lived for the past five years.

"Most of my days are handling a little office routine and stuff like that," he said. "Most of the time I'm taking care of her."

Which is not to say he has stopped watching the weather.

Or forgotten his role as pre-eminent local skywatcher.

Roberts sold his consulting service not long before his last retirement from TV -- there were two earlier similar departures, one from WVUE in the 1970s, the other from WWL's nightly newscasts in 1984 -- but still feels the occasional tug to track a twisting weather system.

"I do kind of miss it," he said. "I had a very, very busy, full schedule. I went from working 12 to 16 hours a day down to nothing, and the shock was fantastic. I got to the level where I was just watching TV and reading and that was about it.

"I keep track of the tropical weather, of course, through the computer and through TV. I can get enough data out of the computer and out of watching the TV, satellite images and radar and that sort of thing.


"It's kind of interesting for me to sit on the side and do some calculations and some tracking, and try some of the old standards I used."

Appropriately, Roberts figures prominently in a new book from Kensington Publishing, "Roar of the Heavens: Surviving Hurricane Camille," by Stefan Bechtel.

Roberts was interviewed for the book, and, at Bechtel's invitation, read galley proofs for accuracy.

"He came all the way from Virginia to see me, three different times," Roberts said. "My phone is unlisted . . . . They still find me.

"What I've done is try to avoid those things. If a person is seriously interested in doing research and actually writing something, I don't mind giving the time. So many people just want to chit-chat. That's real nice and everything and I'm flattered, but I just don't have the time and energy."

Actually, Bechtel first heard about Roberts via a Google search on another topic.

"A wonderful man," Bechtel said. "Kind of courtly, gentlemanly.

"We spent quite a long time talking, and he started making me little maps with what is now a rather shaky hand, like a football coach calling the plays."

Said Roberts of the book, "I don't think it's ever going to be a humongous seller, but it's well written, it's accurate and it gets into the human side of the storm."

The human side of Katrina fascinates Roberts.

"As soon as they would let me, I went to the gap in the 17th Street Canal and looked it over, and then I worked my way through Lakeview and lower New Orleans," he said. "It just was breathtaking, spooky. To go through neighborhoods and never see anybody, just a bunch of old beat-up cars and nobody living in any of the houses."

Roberts' own house, in Metairie, survived with minimal damage.

"In all the years I've been here, it's never flooded," he said. "It's on nice high ground. That's why I bought the house here."

His city didn't fare so well. Still, he's optimistic about New Orleans' future.

He knows the power of these storms, better than just about anybody.

He also knows the power of probability, and figures that the odds for a complete recovery -- aided by the low likelihood of a repeat storm in the near future, plus eventual improved levee protection -- are in New Orleans' favor.

"Remember, they settled New Orleans in 1718 -- no levees, no nothing -- and this is the first time in over 200 years that the city of New Orleans has been devastated," he said. "I don't want to be a negative guy. I don't think we can guarantee that something like it couldn't happen again, but the . . . fact is that we've had this city here for over 200 years and this is the worst one that's ever hit it.

"That doesn't mean that you couldn't have one this year. Statistics don't prove anything, really. What I'm saying is . . . this storm will probably result in producing the best preventive action that we've ever seen.

"You could make it safe enough so that it's unlikely that we'd ever have this happen again, but there's no way you can say there won't be a storm of this character eventually hitting somebody.

"I have a great deal of faith in the fact that this city will be rebuilt, and be better protected than it ever was."

Still, Roberts is prepared to evacuate again.

Come the worst, there's a place in McComb, Miss., to which Nash and Lydia are invited.

"I have some friends that offered a room there for me and my wife if we ever need to make the move," he said. "I have that option. I hope I never have to use it. I know that if the situation developed, I know what I'd do. I know my route up there."

And despite the massive impact of Katrina, and despite his infrequent pangs of professional nostalgia, Roberts is glad he wasn't down at WWL's studio tracking its path to town via squeaky pen and wipe-board.

Lydia needed a place where she could be cared for. No point in risking it.

"The truth of the whole matter is I'm glad I wasn't on for this," he said. "It would've been a very, very trying and tiring ordeal. My method of fooling with these storms is I lock onto 'em and just stay with 'em 24 hours a day seven days a week until they're gone, and that is extremely arduous.

"But I could've done very little for anybody with this storm except do what I did. I left on Saturday."

. . . . . . .

TV columnist Dave Walker can be reached at dwalker@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3429.

http://www.nola.com/living/t-p/index.ss ... thispage=5

[mobilebay]

WOW!

[Jim Cantore]

Great story

[LaPlaceFF]

The icon in New Orleans.....Nash Roberts. He used dry markers while others used computer graphics. He forcasted Georges correctly.

[Ixolib]

Thanks, Sean...

Reading that brought back so many memories of me and my family watching channel 6, channel 8, and finally channel 4, hanging on Nash's every word. Before the days of cable, we'd point our antenna toward N.O. and watch him through the "snow".

Even in Biloxi, when the weather turned one way or the other, everyone would ask "What did Nash say?". I'd say I give him credit for sparking my interest in tropical weather soooooo many years ago. He surely had a unique way of of getting his message across!!

[Sean in New Orleans]

Thanks, Sean...

Reading that brought back so many memories of me and my family watching channel 6, channel 8, and finally channel 4, hanging on Nash's every word. Before the days of cable, we'd point our antenna toward N.O. and watch him through the "snow".

Even in Biloxi, when the weather turned one way or the other, everyone would ask "What did Nash say?". I'd say I give him credit for sparking my interest in tropical weather soooooo many years ago. He surely had a unique way of of getting his message across!!

I understand....there are so many times, esp. during and after Katrina, that I just wished they could have brought him to the screen and just let us know what his thoughts were on the situation at hand....

[mobilebay]

I've got a feeling we are going to be dating Katrina for a long time.

[Sean in New Orleans]

I've got a feeling we are going to be dating Katrina for a long time.

Likely for a generation....as explained by my Mom, when I was hurting at the most difficult time over the loss of our family history..."This is a life-changing event Sean...you need to understand that and move on....we're all in this together."

[BreinLa]

Thanks for sharing Shawn, when I lived in NO in the early 70's Nash was da man, when he said go I went