ABOUT THE

AUTHOR

Bryan Norcross grew up on the coast of Central Florida while his and his friends’ fathers were working to put men on the moon. He was a student of science and broadcasting.

 

Part-time disk-jockey work after high school and through college included his first hurricane broadcast, an advisory for Hurricane Camille. It was August 16, 1969. On that Saturday, Hurricane Warnings were issued for the Florida Panhandle.

 

After TV work in Atlanta and Denver, in 1979, he was running the news department at the ABC affiliate in Louisville, Kentucky. The talented and popular weathercaster at that station decided to leave and pursue a career in country music. Bryan decided that the news department needed a trained meteorologist to replace her, and he started a search. While the search was successful, it also resulted in a new direction for him.

 

Florida State’s Meteorology and Communications Schools got together to create the school’s first Master’s Degree merging meteorology and broadcasting for Bryan. This led to a life-long study of and interest in weather and emergency communications.

 

CNN was starting up just as Bryan graduated, and he became the first weekend weathercaster on that network in 1980. After weather jobs in San Francisco and Atlanta, he was on television in Miami for 25 years on WPLG, WTVJ, and WFOR. From 1996 to 1999, he was anchor of the 5:30 p.m. news on WFOR, in addition to Director of Meteorology for the station.

 

Bryan became nationally known as the man who “talked South Florida through” Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which lead to his work on NBC and as the CBS News Hurricane Analyst from 1996 to 2008.

 

In appreciation for his work before, during, and after Hurricane Andrew, Bryan was publicly recognized with designations of Bryan Norcross Days in Miami, Miami Beach, and Fort Lauderdale, among other cities. In addition, he’s the recipient of an Emmy Award from the southeast chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and the DuPont and Peabody awards, among many other honors.

 

After working on emergency management communications with America’s Emergency Network, Bryan joined The Weather Channel as Senior Hurricane Specialist in 2010. In 2017, he rejoined WPLG/ABC in Miami as Hurricane Specialist where he leads the station's hurricane coverage today.

 

Bryan was profiled in the New York Times following his long hours of coverage of Hurricane Sandy on The Weather Channel, plus his blog and Facebook posts that provided detailed analysis of the storm threat and criticism of the government’s communications systems. The Times article quotes a Twitter post that described Bryan as “the most trusted hurricane human on the planet.”

 

Bryan is a longtime resident of Miami Beach.