Dear meteorologists of New Orleans,
Good manners prompt me to begin with an apology.
By the time this communication reaches you, we will be well into the fat part of the Atlantic hurricane season. If history is any guide, it can be safely assumed that, despite the nagging of my better angels, I will have almost certainly uttered a few partly cloudy things about you.
That is not that unusual for people all over this great nation of ours, I would imagine. After all, your forecasts — 40% chances of this, scattered that, partly whatever — will by their very nature be inaccurate for somebody in your viewership area.
As finance guru Patrick L. Young once accurately mused, “The trouble with weather forecasting is that it is right too often for us to ignore it and wrong too often for us to rely on it.”
(A similar sentiment could describe the Sewerage & Water Board, but I digress.)
That said, we in New Orleans have a unique relationship with our TV weather oracles. That’s how it works when you live in a place as climatologically unfit for human habitation as we do.
We live below sea level, in a bowl, and in a swamp infested by mosquitoes, alligators and short-term rentals. If that were not enough, we continue to elect lawmakers dedicated to shielding those very entities that profit while making our precarious existence precariouser and precariouser with each new exploratory well.
(Petroleum companies. I am talking about petroleum companies. Oops. Did I just digress again?)
My point is: Here, weather forecasts are not just topics of light discussion at after-hours icebreakers. In other cities, they are but another segment on the evening news. In New Orleans, they are a season-long soap opera, complete with plot twists and guest stars. (Stay away, Jim Cantore. We don’t need your bad mojo around here.)
Which is why I write today not to bury you, dear weather experts, but to praise you — and, indeed, defend you.
After all, our meteorologists are not mere weather bunnies. The good ones achieve near-deity status. The king of the local forecasting heap, in fact, is still so revered, he is known universally by one name, just like Fats, Drew, Hubig and other such peerless local cultural luminaries.
That, of course, is Nash. Even 16 years after his passing and a quarter century after his retirement, he is fondly remembered as the most trusted man in New Orleans.
Granted, that is something of a low isobar, but it’s not nothing. America’s drylanders had Cronkite. We had Nash, the Magic Marker mage, with his steadying presence, his matter-of-fact delivery and unassuming, unflagging excellence.
Subsequent generations produced their own local weather stars, none of whom have quite ascended to Nash’s level but who are still remembered fondly for offering crucial guidance in times of great uncertainty. There was Dan Milham and his D.A.R.N. Scale. Margaret Orr with her heart-on-her-sleeve charm. Bob Breck and his force-of-nature confidence. Don Westbrook. Steve Bellas. Carl Arredondo.
Sure, their day-to-day forecasts were important. But anybody can rip and read the National Weather Service outlook on-air. Even Morgus gave it a memorable try back when the world was still black-and-white.
When something was aswirl in the Gulf, however — that is when they really earned their rum rations, and the region’s affection along with it.
As many of the aforementioned proved, the best of meteorologists stop being “talent” during hurricane season and instead become neighbors. They stay with us through the harrowing hours, translating spaghetti models into yakamein models – in other words, into terms New Orleanians can understand — and generally project calm while the rest of us mine the junk drawer for batteries and fill the bathtub for reasons we’re not entirely sure of.
Maybe it’s the recent anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, or maybe it’s the knowledge that we may be smack in the middle of some cone of uncertainty by the time this message reaches you. Whichever the case, I feel compelled to preemptively say, on behalf of us all living here at world’s end: Thank you. Thank you, Chris, David, Payton and Zack. Thank you, Shelby, Scot, Bruce, Raven and all the rest.
We might show it in curious ways at times — especially if you read online comment streams — but beneath all the second-guessing lies something else: gratitude for the neighbor who stays up with us when the wind starts to howl.
Thank you for being that neighbor.
Insincerely yours,
New Orleans
