Hello All!   
      
   by Dominic Massa / Eyewitness News   
   wwltv.com   
   Posted on December 19, 2010 at 6:19 PM   
      
   Nash Roberts: 1918-2010   
      
   'We'll never see his kind again'   
      
   [That sums up the way I feel about him because he was the most reliable   
   weatherman in New Orleans and drew stuff on the map that meteoroligsts today   
   do not do.  ONe caller to the station and complained because Nash had the   
   radar running coumterclockwise and he went on the air and explained to the   
   caller and the idiots running the station that it doesn't make a difference]   
      
   Nash C. Roberts Jr., the meteorologist who became a local institution among   
   generations of New Orleanians, by simply using a felt-tipped marker and   
   weather map to skillfully predict the paths and patterns of hurricanes, died   
   this weekend. He was 92.   
      
   Funeral arrangements are pending.   
      
   During a career that lasted more than 50 years on local television, New   
   Orleans viewers came to trust his calm and accurate forecasts so much so that   
   the question "What does Nash say?" was the way many gauged the potential   
   impact of an impending weather system.   
      
   "Sometimes I wish I knew myself why I am right," Roberts said in a 1998   
   interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "But a portion of it is just   
   instinctive. It's just a talent I have."   
      
   Roberts retired from meteorology and his on-air role at WWL-TV during   
   hurricane season in 2001. Throughout his career, he was the informed and   
   educated voice of calm and reason, and his forecasting with felt-tip pens   
   (which served him well, years into the high-tech age of broadcast meteorology)   
   helped illustrate the direction of hurricanes since 1947. When he was inducted   
   into the Greater New Orleans Broadcasters Association's New Orleans   
   Broadcasting Hall of Fame, the group commented that Roberts had been on the   
   air longer than 95 percent of the stations in the country. By the time he   
   retired, Roberts had worked at three of the city's television stations.   
      
   For over five decades, the New Orleans native was a rock of stability during   
   trying times: the horror of Hurricane Audrey in 1957, the devastation of   
   Hurricanes Betsy and Camille in the 1960s, and the heart-stopping threat of   
   Hurricane Georges in 1998. Roberts was there through it all, with his simple   
   map, felt-tipped pen and lifetime of weather wisdom.   
      
   The Times-Picayune summed up Roberts' impact in 1998, in a special issue   
   commemorating 50 years of television in New Orleans: "His power is tremendous.   
   Some of us won't go to sleep until Nash says it's OK. His strong suit is   
   personal forecasts - a mix of hunch and 50 years of knowledge - mapped out in   
   Magic Marker."   
      
   With the dawn of the television era in New Orleans, Nash Roberts became the   
   city's first TV meteorologist. But it was a job in which he never saw himself.   
      
   His original career ambition was to become a pilot, which also required him to   
   study meteorology. He earned his pilot's wings along with his federal license   
   as a meteorological instructor, and began teaching that specialized science at   
   Loyola University New Orleans in 1940.   
      
   When World War II broke out, the U.S. Navy recruited Roberts to serve as an   
   aeronautics instructor. In 1943, he was sent to Florida's Banana River Naval   
   Air Station to learn about emerging radar technology. After navigating night   
   patrol searches for German U-boats in the Atlantic, he was transferred to the   
   Pacific theater. In April 1945, Roberts was selected to serve as both   
   navigator and meteorologist aboard Admiral Chester Nimitz's aircraft carrier.   
   Roberts would make history there, as the first meteorologist to fly into the   
   eye of a typhoon, to chart its course.   
      
   The Navy had been looking for a way to sail a carrier fleet close enough to   
   the Japanese main islands to execute an air attack, without first being   
   detected.   
      
   "I don't know who came up with the idea, but there was the thought that maybe   
   we could sail in behind a typhoon, and that would jam the Japanese radar and   
   ground all of their search aircraft," Roberts recalled.   
      
   "We embarked on an experimental flight from Guam to the Philippines. I was to   
   navigate through the eye of this typhoon for the purpose of gathering   
   meteorological data," he said.   
      
   In 1946, Roberts returned home to New Orleans, took his $3,500 in saved Navy   
   pay and opened a weather consulting office downtown - the first in the south.   
   Roberts' clients were oil companies, barge diving, fishing companies and   
   members of the maritime industry.   
      
   "Every day we had something big going on, where something hinged on the   
   weather," Roberts recalled in a 2001 interview with WWL-TV anchor Angela Hill.   
   "It surely kept you on your toes and kept you awake at night."   
      
   Five years later, Roberts was offered a broadcasting job, but refused at   
   first. He said it was because of the fact that while he was well-versed in the   
   science of meteorology, he was far from comfortable on camera. Local   
   advertising executive Dave Cloud gave Roberts an offer he couldn't refuse - a   
   trip to Chicago to meet with a meteorologist making $80,000 forecasting the   
   weather. Nash went, and a career followed.   
      
   Roberts, a graduate of Alcee Fortier High School and Loyola University, spent   
   22 years as an on-air meteorologist at WDSU-TV before moving to WVUE-TV. In   
   1978, he signed on as meteorologist at WWL-TV, where he worked as the nightly   
   on-air forecaster for close to 10 years, before retiring from daily TV   
   appearances to run his consulting business next door to the station.   
      
   Even after his partial retirement, Roberts' hurricane expertise would be   
   relied on by WWL-TV viewers during every hurricane or tropical system to   
   threaten Louisiana's coast. In an article analyzing news coverage of Hurricane   
   Bret in 1999, Roberts explained: "The criteria is the same as it's always   
   been. If it's in the Gulf of Mexico, it's time for me to come on the air." In   
   1998, with his accurate coverage of Hurricane Georges (predicting it would   
   make a last-minute jog to the Mississippi Gulf Coast and spare New Orleans),   
   Roberts earned national media attention, in The New York Times and People.   
      
   "For as long as most New Orleanians can remember, getting a bead on the storms   
   that regularly threaten life and livelihood here comes down to one simple   
   phrase: `What does Nash say?'" wrote reporter Corey Kilgannon in The New York   
   Times.   
      
   "Locals know a storm is serious simply when Mr. Roberts appears on the screen.   
   'They see me in the store buying my mark-up pens and they follow me around   
   asking when the storm's hitting,' said Mr. Roberts," stated the 1998 article.   
      
   In an article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that same year, headlined   
   "New Orleans weatherman right as rain," Roberts explained his forecasting   
   philosophy.   
      
   "It's like being married. Your wife or your husband can detect a change in you   
   before anyone else can. I have to have that kind of relationship with the   
   hurricane."   
      
   Roberts retired from weather forecasting to devote his life to caring for his   
   wife Lydia, who was in failing health. The couple shared over 60 years of   
   marriage before Mrs. Roberts died in 2007.   
      
   Shortly after his retirement in 2001, Roberts donated his collection of papers   
   (used to forecast hurricanes since the 1940s) to Loyola University, where they   
   are a treasured addition to the J. Edgar and Louise S. Monroe Library. He was   
   honored with numerous awards and citations over the years, including induction   
   into the New Orleans Broadcasting Hall of Fame and a Lifetime Achievement   
   Award from the Press Club of New Orleans. In 1984, Loyola University presented   
   Roberts with an honorary doctorate in science.   
      
   Roberts, whose diverse list of hobbies included beekeeping, fishing, hunting   
   and spending time on his large ranch in St. Tammany Parish, was also a   
   founding board member and former chairman of the board of WYES-TV, New   
   Orleans' first public television station. Roberts also served for several   
   years on the state Board of Education.   
      
   He is survived by three brothers; two sons, Kenneth and Nash Roberts III; and   
   four grandchildren.   
      
      
   Regards,   
      
   Roger    
   --- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+   
    * Origin: NCS BBS - Houma, LA - (1:3828/7)