Profile of New Orleans television meteorologist Nash Roberts
Author: Carroll Devine
Aired on WWNO FM New Orleans May 30, 2002
DEVINE: Both the hurricane season and New Orleans' most acclaimed hurricane
forecaster exited quietly last summer. Television weatherman Nash Roberts,
a living legend at age 83, is the man whom generations of locals have
trusted as the calm before, and often during the storm.
Now officially retired, Roberts was New Orleans' and the South's first
television meteorologist for WDSU in the early 50's. That station's current
chief meteorologist, Dan Milham, said that in fact Roberts was one of the
first few in the country to present weather information on TV.
Milham: He started presenting maps and weather reports on television when it was
actually I think it was considered sort of a goofy idea at the time.
DEVINE: Eventually Roberts would forecast for each of New Orleans three major
TV stations, earning a reputation for having a kind of genius for storm
forecasting -- from 1957's Hurricane Audrey, through Georges of 98.
Often to the consternation of other talented local forecasters, Roberts was
the man to whom many residents would turn as THE authority. With a
very low-tech presentation, he spoke as if talking to close friends.
Nash: What I wanted to do was to simply and directly talk it over with them,
and that's the way I started the TV shows and that's the way I ended them.
There's no reason to hype up a hurricane. There's already built-in hype. If
you get real nervous and you get panicky, you make mistakes; you make
bad judgments.
I wasn't as calm as I looked, you know. I was under a lot of tension, but
on the air I didn't think that it was good to communicate to the people a
frantic frightened thing when you can't do anything about it.
DEVINE: He looked cool even during Hurricane Betsy while broadcasting live in front
of his office window - with 120 mile an hour winds pounding against it..
Nash: I was giving the forecast and I heard this crash behind me, and the big plate
window - I felt it shattered and I felt something hit me behind the neck. I
thought it was a piece of glass and I was sure I was bleeding, but I finished
the show. From there on out there was water on the floor and we had all
these cables running all along the floor. "We never knew when we were
going to be electrocuted. It was a wild night.
DEVINE: Another wild time was during WWII when 26-year old Roberts became the first meteorologist
to plot a typhoon by flying into its eye.
Nash: That was real primitive typhoon reconnaissance. You see, in those days we weren't
equipped like the aircraft are today to do hurricane reconnaissance.
It would be foolish to not be a little frightened, but we never doubted we
could do it. It didn't bother me much at all.
DEVINE: In recent years, Roberts was called to TV duty only when a storm seriously
threatened in the Gulf. Residents, like Nancy Nolan, just wanted to know -
"What does Nash say?"
Nancy: He used his wax pencil and gave a certain set of coordinates and information
that we needed, and he didn't clutter up the screen with a lot of gimmicks.
And when you're worried about approaching weather, all you want is the
basic information, and that's what he was able to give us.
DEVINE: Dan Milham and his counterparts recognized that too.
Milham: In time of high emotion, in time of fear, they really turned to him as a
steadying influence. He's always been there. He's a calm, easygoing guy, as
you know, so they turned to him for his calmness, his steadiness. He's still
there; it's like the city's still here, so maybe we'll get through this.
DEVINE: But Milham didn't agree with Roberts's refusal to use a computerized
presentation like other forecasters.
Milham: The use of animated colorful graphics tends to tell people more. In the past
three decades Nash has tended to stay the same.
DEVINE: Behind the scenes, though, Roberts used as much technology as the others.
While his staff technically gathered data he needed, Roberts did what he
called the grunt work.
Nash: You just get in there and you lock onto a storm and stay with it until it's
finished. Once I locked on I analyzed everything I got. Basically it's just a
lot of hard work in getting to know the storm and the environment around it.
DEVINE: After Roberts had returned from the war, he started his own meteorological
consulting business, advising oil companies working in and around the Gulf
of Mexico. His success there prompted more confidence in his TV forecasts,
even when his predictions were at odds with the National Weather Service
or other meteorologists.
Nash: I don't set out to do that, but sometimes my evaluation of a situation is
different from theirs and this is just normal. But, I don't care what anybody
else says. If I'm convinced that this is what's going to happen, then that's
what I'm going to tell the client or the people on television, and that's it. I
have no quarrel with them. There's plenty of room for disagreement, I can
tell you. I couldn't do without them because they gather all the material and
provide the communications, and so I use everything everybody else uses,
but I have a little extra thing that I do on my own.
DEVINE: Roberts explained that thing like this.
Nash: About 75 percent of the success is based on lengthy experience and lengthy
training and the other 25 percent is basically an individual thing. It's not
teachable. It's an instinct or intuition, or whatever you want to say, because
that part of meteorology - about three quarters of meteorology is science
and 25 percent is art. And so the individual forecaster and his approach and
his understanding of the actual physics of the atmosphere and the changes
that take place makes a difference in the quality of the forecast.
If you give them anything but your honest opinions, you're cheating them.
I don't color things good bad or indifferent. It'd be a lot easier for me to go
along with all the other people, and I wouldn't have to work as hard, and I
wouldn't have my neck stuck out but that's not what people pay you for.
DEVINE: Nash Roberts forecasts will be missed during hurricane season here - not
that he's never been wrong, as his counterparts like to remind us, but those
times don't seem to be remembered as much. .
Nash: I still wonder why they trusted me so much, but I guess that we just got to
be friends - you know, after 40 or 50 years, people like you or they don't
like you. The public's been so great with me. I don't understand the
philosophy or the phenomenon that made it that way, but it's just lucky I
guess.
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