FOX Weather’s Bryan Norcross Talks Hurricanes, Ted Turner, Richard Simmons & More

When Hurricane Andrew ravaged South Florida in 1992, meteorologist Bryan Norcross kept viewers informed while on the air for what would be 23 hours. He was a calming presence for many residents who were experiencing unimaginable devastation of the Category 5 storm. Well before and since then, the 75-year-old knows the importance of his chosen profession. 

His Andrew coverage put him in the national spotlight. Although by this time Norcross was already a respected name, getting his start as the first weekend weathercaster on the upstart CNN in 1980. Over the last four years, he worked for FOX Weather and is currently their hurricane specialist. 

With another Atlantic hurricane season starting, Norcross looks to prepare viewers with a live special Hurricane HQ: Eye on the Season from the National Hurricane Center in Miami on June 1 alongside Ian Oliver. The program is part of a week’s worth of coverage on the network through June 6. Coverage will also see Norcross take viewers inside the cockpit with hurricane hunters. 

Here the renowned meteorologist previews what’s to come and looks back on his storied career including working for the late Ted Turner and his  unforgettable encounter with Richard Simmons. 

I don’t want to age myself, but I remember during Hurricane Andrew being in the bathroom in the dark without power listening to you on the radio and watching you on my portable black and white television. You got me and so many others through that storm. Coming up on another season, do these past experiences put in perspective the work you do? 

Bryan Norcross: There is no question people like me and the meteorological community is tremendously important to helping people get through storms. The world has changed so much. My contention was people were better informed in 1992 than they are today because the information was less confusing to them. Nobody told me before or while Hurricane Andrew was happening on that Sunday saying “Well I was so confused about what was about to happen.” People went about their business. By that Sunday evening, the streets were empty and people thought they were ready. Nobody was ready for what happened as it turned out. 

They did their business. They were nervous a storm was coming, but it wasn’t they were unsure about what was coming. With all the uncertainty people have today by receiving fragments of information from people. Most people don’t tune into the television and watch their favorite weathercaster or news team. Hopefully, they watch FOX Weather, but hopefully they watch their local stations too because you need absolute local information from those city managers. With all the sources we have and voices, people aren’t attached to their local news teams or even national news like they used to do. Committing credible information people accept, don’t doubt, and understand and aren’t confused by is much more challenging. 

In the world of AI and social media, I feel there is a double-edge sword. You’re getting information in real-time but then have to consider the source. 

Remember when you’d have the TV on while preparing. You’d turn the TV on and follow the story as you go. Now you get it in little fragments. There is a general distrust of the source material, even if it seems to come from someone you trust. Does it come from somebody you trust? There is always a layer of doubt over material you get on social media. We didn’t have that. On broadcast television, people aren’t as familiar with the personalities and haven’t built up trust watching the local or national news every night. 

I feel with that Hurricane Andrew marathon broadcast, you would have certainly gone viral. 

Well, I’ve had longer broadcasts believe it or not. I just had a super long, mostly 24 hour day. These things don’t penetrate the social system like they used to. Some people watch FOX Weather. Other people watch local stations or The Weather Channel or YouTube or X or wherever it is. That’s the way people consume information now. It’s not three or four channels and you settle on one. In the case of Hurricane Andrew, the way it ended up was that Channel 4 was the only station that was still broadcasting. Everyone else went off the air or Channel 7 was still on the air, but they had to evacuate the studio and didn’t really have the studio to really be informed. We had done the work to be able to do our best to stay on the air and continue. Two-and-a-half years before Andrew, we had a project to be the hurricane station and then we had this hellacious hurricane. It was an example of how preparing works. 

You’re broadcasting from Miami. What can viewers expect from this? 

We’re going to cover a variety of hurricane topics. One topic that is close to my heart because I don’t think people understand the magnitude of the story is that it is the 100th anniversary of the 1962 Miami hurricane. The hurricane reshaped South Florida. If that same hurricane came into metropolitan South Florida today, it would be projected as the most expensive natural disaster in the history of the United States in the $300 billion range. It would reshape the direction of the economy in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and South Florida. Where Hurricane Andrew was astoundingly strong it was confined to the southern part of Miami-Dade County in terms of being catastrophic. The 1926 hurricane was so big it put ships up into Downtown Miami. It also flooded Downtown Fort Lauderdale six feet and Downtown West Palm Beach and completely destroyed Hollywood and Dania Beach. 

Not to mention the water came completely over Miami Beach. It was a different scale of disaster. Buildings are built better now just like they were built even better after Andrew. The city is so much more dense now where it was 125,000 back then and now 3 million just in Miami-Dade County. The people that would be stranded in their high rise with no water, electricity, or even a connection to the outside. It’s beyond a daunting thing to imagine, but it can happen any year. Last year was also the first real regular use and evaluation of AI computer models. The Google DeepMind model was spectacular and ended up being the best performing of all the computer models, better than the National Hurricane Center forecast right out of the box. 

We’re going to talk about what that means for the future and how that stands how we change in how we evolution computer models machines versus humans moving forward. Things are moving at a rate now that we’ve never seen before…To the credit of the National Hurricane Center, they are moving fast to adopt this new technology where they are producing the best forecast that can be made just like on FOX Weather. We  are using AI forecasts more and more and evaluating them at the same time. You can’t deny their success in 2025. 

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FOX Weather

As you look into this upcoming season, what do you want to say about El Niño’s impact? 

When we talk about the hurricane season and the current state of the atmosphere and the ocean and so forth, El Niño is the big player. Over the last few years we’ve had two big players. El Niño, which is a Pacific phenomenon where it has to do with the temperature of the water along the equator south of Hawaii. We’ve also had an extremely warm Atlantic. So if you have an El Niño in the Pacific, that tends to create hostile upper level conditions over the Atlantic which tends to suppress hurricane activity. Extremely warm water in the Atlantic means more energy generated, and they do counteract the El Niño effect. This year for the first time in a number of years the Atlantic is quite cool and more long-term normal. It does not look, as we are here at the beginning of the season, like the Atlantic counteracted the suppressive effects of an El Niño. That’s why the seasonal forecast calls for average to below average in terms of the number of named storms. 

We’ll be monitoring El Niño, as people throw around the term Super El Niño, which is not a technical term. The technical term is very strong and likely that high consensus strong or very strong or super if you want to use that word. While it’s slightly below or average in terms of storms in prediction,  I always hasten to add that one of the slowest hurricane seasons on record was 1983 where there were four named storms. One of them was a Category 3 storm Alicia that hit the Galveston-Houston area. In 1992, that was an El Niño year with Hurricane Andrew. Weather patterns can come together in one week like it did in 1992 where it was pristine for development with a pretty small storm. You can’t rule out a destructive event happening. It’s just looking at the overall odds with fewer storms with fewer name storms. 

FOX Weather

You’ve been at this for so long. What are your plans for the future? 

As long as I’m still healthy and still going. To me this advent of AI and how this has improved hurricane forecasting. Right out of the box there is a new product that is so dramatically different in concept, but spectacular in execution. To me, that is fabulous. I spent a lot of time learning about it. I have a miner consulting role with communication side when they rule out. The thing is understanding how this is affecting the world. As long as I can get around and feel good, I’ll keep learning and keep doing this as long as I can. 

What do you remember about your time with CNN and Ted Turner? 

There were two parts of my life Ted was a big part of. The first one is when CNN started, I met him and was part of the initial team in 1980. I was right out of meteorology school from Florida State University. I had done TV in Tallahassee while I was in school. Ted was this unusual and amazing force. He hired people that were super pros in the industry to come and do CNN. Sam Zelman, who was a big name in television news at that time, hired me. I was supposed to be in at 9 or 10 a.m. I was trying to get oriented and arrive at 7 a.m. and they go, “Where have you been?!”

I had to go on the air right away. It was the day they were covering the venting of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. They wanted me to talk about what the winds were doing. I had to figure out where the bathroom was at the same time as I was on CNN doing this report. It was an amazing experience to be involved with the team that tried to get CNN off the ground. We called it “Chicken Noodle News.” In many ways, it was a startup, but it was a startup that had incredibly talented people involved and experienced people. It was a start-up. To start a 24-hour news channel in Atlanta of all places was something.…I was constantly in Ted’s office with all of the energy and insanity and amazement that went with being around Ted and doing his shows. 

He was at full peak at that time. He was at full confidence because CNN at that time of 1981 or 1982 he was ranting about the networks ruining American society and how he was going to show them how to do it…I did give up the weather for a while to run magazine shows and documentaries. I interacted with Ted a lot. I can remember going to Las Vegas for an interview with Richard Simmons. He wouldn’t do it. That was an experience all by itself. I went to his hotel room with all his entourage where he was the Richard Simmons you’ve seen on television, except when it was time to talk business it was like all that switched off. He wanted to know what the show was about. 

I come down the elevator and hear “Norcross!” across the casino. He asked what’s wrong with Simmons. I said we’re all good. I had a lot of interaction with Ted at that time. There are lots and lots of stories, but Ted was a force in so many ways. He put his financial life on the line more than once. All the chips were on the table. He barely made it through the fire and he did and the world benefited from what he did. He was an amazing man. 

Hurricane HQ: Eye on the Season, June 1, 8/7c, FOX Weather

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