Meteorologist. TV Personality. Influencer. Today, our online content creators do, and have done, it all. If you add conservation activist to that list, you get local New Orleanian Scot Pilié. Pilié has been sharing is love of the Big Easy through social media for a few years now, but moving back home after COVID-19 gave the Crescent City native a newfound love for the city that raised him. Through his social media platforms, Pilié highlights the best of the city, while never steering too far away from his weather-related content, and now shares a deeper passion for conserving our coast through his work with Pontchartrain Conservancy. Whether at a bar or on a boat, Pilié uses his talent to amplify our culture to the world.
Q: How did you get into meteorology?
I call myself a weather junkie. Since a very young age, I was obsessed with weather, and my dad’s a geologist, so, not weather, but science adjacent. We would always go out to the lakefront and watch storms roll in. I’m also an encyclopedia for any tropical storms and hurricane; I can tell you the year. Did you know there’s these things called weather forums? Weather forum is basically where all the weather junkies unite. It is [for] meteorologists, atmospheric scientists, local weather weenies, people that are just fascinated with weather, or people that just want to stay up to date with like things like models and satellite trends and hurricane hunter observations. You want weather data, go to a weather forum. They’re still in existence today. They used to exist in 2002/2005, and so for all those big storms that we had that period, you know Isidor, Lily, Ivan, Katrina, we were all on these weather forums. And again, I was, like, eight years old or less. I was watching these weather forums and reporting on model changes and stuff. I’ve always loved weather.
Q: Is it easy transition from TV meteorologist to influencer and content creator?
I feel like I was molded, in a way, by TV. But you know what I always found interesting is that I started out at a lot of stations that were the last place station in the market, and I’ve always said that the brightest star can shine the brightest in the darkest places. What I mean by that is that some stations have this really big, kind of, grandfather power, where they’ve had lifelong viewership, people that are dedicated to watching their station, whereas, when I started out in my TV career in Lafayette, the station that I started at, started a week before I got there. I graduated college, and this TV station was launching, and that’s pretty new. They had zero followers. I had zero followers. I had one person that would watch my lives; that was my mom. I told myself that I could create not only my brand, but also piggyback and build a station’s brand and so wherever I’ve gone, from Lafayette to New Orleans to Atlanta, at the Weather Channel to back to New Orleans and now independent, I always relied on that notion that I am the brand. I’m also just helping to build up a station’s trustworthiness just by being me. That’s very important to recognize you are your own power. You have your own superpowers, and you can bring that and bring that life and that breath of fresh air into a news station just by being yourself.
Q: In addition to meteorology content, you get to do the fun stuff too. Is that an exciting change?
It’s been the best thing ever. I can’t even describe to you how much fun that I’ve had doing all of the things that I’ve done, and it’s been a lot. I like to say that I work eight jobs, you know, because I really do. I started working at an environmental nonprofit, and I now work at Pontchartrain Conservancy part time. They do a lot of coastal restoration and wetland restoration and environmental advocacy. That is a huge part of me. I’ve always been obsessed with coastal land loss and the land loss crisis that we have here, and how can we fix that? This is something that impacts all of us. That’s a passion project for me. I love being that voice, because, when you have a brand and you have a voice and a platform, using that for good is very important. I also do social media lifestyle [content.] I started going to all of these incredible towns and cities that we have in Louisiana. We have so many that are hidden gems. My husband and I, when we hopped on social media [during the] pandemic, we started posting fun videos, just our day in the life of living in Louisiana, and that kind of inspired us to make that jump into more of like an independent realm.
Q: Can you tell us about your work with conservation and Pontchartrain Conservancy?
I think that leading with science is so important in all aspects. We have had a long period of time to now study and analyze why we are losing so much land at such a rapid rate. What’s scary, I think about it, is that it’s a lot of different issues: oil and gas, with all the canals that were dug through the ‘30s, ‘40s, ‘50s, all the way up into present time, started that real salt water intrusion into the wetlands.
Then you had the levees that were built. Levees are great. We love levees. They protect cities. They keep us all safe from spring flooding from the Mississippi River. The Mississippi River is responsible for building all of Louisiana. You have to go way back in time for that to happen, but it’s responsible for building south Louisiana. Then we levied off the Mississippi River [and] funneled all this sediment that now just drops off into the Gulf. So now we don’t have any replenishment of the sediments in the wetlands. And the big goal of Mid-Barataria [Sediment Diversion Project] was to start this process of reconnecting the Mississippi River with the wetlands. At the surface, that sounds wonderful, right? Reconnect the tool that built the land, and now we can start building new land. What’s crazy is, we’re gaining land over by Morgan City and the Atchafalaya Basin, because the sediment is allowed to free flow right into that area. So this was very upsetting to a lot of coastal scientists, atmospheric scientists, basically any one that leads with science, because this was something that was backed and studied, and we knew over time that the Mississippi River could get back to doing its thing. It could start rebuilding, and not only rebuilding, replenishing the marshes that we still have. I feel like it does all tie in.
I love that a lot of coastal restoration advocates have been very vocal about this, because we love dredging, right? Dredging is great. Dredging is the process of taking sand from the bottom of the Gulf floor and turning it again into tangible islands and barrier islands. But dredging is a short-term Band Aid. You get one storm, it can wipe out those dredged islands like that. You need both, and so my hope is that we get more projects. Maybe they’re not the big ones, right? Maybe they’re not Mid-Barataria, but maybe we get more small projects that start to refuel our swamps and wetlands, because this is our livelihood.
Favorite Restaurant: Recently, I went to Zasu and it was incredible.
Favorite Festival: Festival of the Bonfires
Favorite thing to do in the city: Pick a neighborhood and go on a bar crawl.
True Confession: I want to be on “Survivor” so bad!
