13 Facts About Nash Roberts

Nash Roberts began his career in weather as an officer of the United States Navy during World War II.

Nash Roberts worked for Admiral Chester Nimitz in the Pacific.

Nash Roberts told WWL-TV anchor Angela Hill he had never envisioned working in television and refused offers to do so until a local advertising executive offered to finance his visiting Chicago to observe the weathercaster of that city's NBC affiliate station at work.

Nash Roberts was the first full-time weathercaster in the Deep South and one of the first to use radar on television weather broadcasts.

Nash Roberts continued as a local forecaster on New Orleans television and radio.

Nash Roberts was the only local forecaster to accurately predict the paths of Hurricane Betsy in 1965, which hit the New Orleans area directly, and Hurricane Camille in 1969, a storm that devastated coastal Mississippi.

In later years, Nash Roberts was the favorite forecaster in the area, especially among older viewers, to the point where competitors good-naturedly referred to him as "the Weather God".

Nash Roberts retired from the Eyewitness News anchor desk in February 1984, but would come back during storms to help calm and educate the locals during hurricane season, sometimes to the visible resentment of the station's younger weathermen, especially when Nash Roberts's experience, intuition, and pen and paper yielded more accurate predictions than their computer models.

Nash Roberts accurately predicted the path of Hurricane Georges in 1998, while all the full-time on-air meteorologists of the area, namely Bob Breck of WVUE and Dan Milham of WDSU, predicted an incorrect track.

Nash Roberts finally retired from even his special hurricane appearances in July 2001, and that same year donated his papers to Loyola University, New Orleans.

Nash Roberts was fully retired, and had not been seen on TV in several years by 2006.

Lydia and Nash Roberts had two sons, four grandchildren and six great grandchildren.

Nash Roberts died on December 18,2010, after a lengthy illness at 92.