Bryan Norcross, Speaking Beyond What’s Forecast

David Walter Banks for The New York Times

ON AIR: Bryan Norcross in the studio.

As Hurricane Sandy made its way up the coast, Bryan Norcross sat at his desk in the Weather Channel's headquarters in Atlanta, waiting for the National Hurricane Center to issue a warning for the Northeast.

In many ways, he is still waiting.

"On Friday, Jim Cantore asked me on the air, 'Are they going to issue a hurricane watch for the Northeast?' " said Mr. Norcross, 61, referring to his fellow Weather Channel meteorologist. "And I said, 'They've got to do it tomorrow' " — meaning Oct. 27, two days before the arrival of dangerous winds — to give people time to prepare.

But as that day came and went, no such warning was issued. Because the storm was predicted to become a post-tropical system by the time it hit land, the hurricane center (part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA) chose not to issue any hurricane advisory, fearing that the confusion that might result from a midstorm shift in warnings.

"We all looked at ourselves and said, 'You've got to be kidding,' " Mr. Norcross said — and when he returned late that night to the Atlanta house he uses during hurricane season, he took to his blog to express his frustration.

"I'm betting," he wrote, that the hurricane center's rules "didn't envision a super-mega-combo freak of a storm slamming into the most populated part of the country.

"When all hell is breaking loose, sometimes you've got to break a few rules to do the right thing."

Nobody knows this better than Mr. Norcross. In 1992, then a weatherman in South Florida, he became the breakout star of Hurricane Andrew when he broadcast live for 23 hours straight, much of it from a storage room, at WTVJ, an NBC affiliate. Many residents credited his steady tone and resourceful tips (if you have ever huddled in a bathtub covered by a mattress, you can thank Mr. Norcross) with getting them through the storm. Afterward, some Floridians scrawled "Norcross for President" on their battered homes.

Twenty years later, the trim, slow-talking Mr. Norcross, who now lives in Miami during the off-season, keeps his eye on hurricanes from the cushier environs of the Weather Channel, using television cameras, his blog and Facebook to issue technically detailed and often passionate reports about systems he believes pose high risk. To many self-described weather nerds, he is still "the most trusted hurricane human on the planet," as a woman on Twitter recently described him.

Last week, his criticism of the hurricane center and of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York City for briefly playing down Hurricane Sandy's severity once again placed him in the middle of the storm. While the government did a top-notch job predicting the storm's path, he says, the confusion over warnings exposed the failings of a system ill equipped for an age of rising seas and monster storms.

"They made outstanding forecasts," he said of NOAA. "Their strength forecast was essentially perfect, and their storm surge forecast for New York City was absolutely as good as a forecast can be these days."

But when it came time to issue warnings, Mr. Norcross believes NOAA was hamstrung by its byzantine guidelines, ultimately placing its bureaucracy ahead of its obligation to make people understand the danger they faced.

At the heart of the matter is NOAA's bifurcated system for issuing storm advisories. There is one set of warnings for tropical storms, and another set for northeaster or winter storms.

Technically, this most recent event was both, "a hybrid storm with a hurricane in the middle, wrapped up in a nor'easter," Mr. Norcross said. The rules simply weren't made with such a system in mind. "That's when you have to call an audible," he said.

"Yes, the warnings they put out for hurricane-force wind warnings and then coastal flood warnings and all these sorts of things all cumulatively mean the same thing," he said. "But the average disc jockey or TV announcer or anchorman is not going to communicate those things fully and accurately and with the same impact as simply with the two words: hurricane warning."

That lack of urgency from NOAA may have contributed to the dismissive tone of Mr. Bloomberg's news conference the Saturday before the storm, in which he sounded not particularly nervous. "Although we are expecting a large surge of water, it is not expected to be a tropical-storm- or hurricane-type surge," he said, adding that after the storm, the city should consider giving aid to regions north or south of the city that would surely be harder hit.

"I'm baffled by what the mayor said," Mr. Norcross said on the air that night. "Shocked, to tell you the truth."

Later that night, he was even more blunt.

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