Weathering change
For KTRK meteorologist Tim Heller, there’s a new experience in the forecast
H urricane Harvey, which slammed into Houston a year ago this week, and its aftermath forced many Texans to make life-changing decisions. For KTRK (Channel 13) chief meteorologist Tim Heller, it helped him decide that — after 35 years of covering weather, 16 of them in Houston — he wanted to hang up his Doppler radar for good.
Heller announced last month that his last day at the station will be Jan. 11.
“I always wanted to control my destiny as much as I could,” he said recently during a break before going on the air. “As much as I could, I always wanted to go out on top and I thought — not my coverage, but our coverage, and our response as a city, nothing will ever top that in my lifetime. … It was so invigorating to see how the city responded. I think I decided in the middle of that, that this is the pinnacle of my career.”
But the husband and father of three had been eyeing the exit for some time.
“My contract’s up in October, and I’ve been thinking about it for awhile,” he said. “I read an article in Money magazine many years ago about people who have second careers, who give up everything and start all over. … About three or four years ago, I started thinking about that. I initially proposed it to my wife, and I think she probably blew it off as a life crisis.”
Her health crisis last summer — she had what’s called a silent heart attack — also helped Heller put things in perspective. “You’ve got one life, one opportunity,” he said. “Like every family, we’ve had health issues, and so I’m like, ‘What do we want to do?’ I don’t want to work holidays anymore, which is required of this job. We can’t take vacations in May, November or February because of ratings. I can’t take a vacation in the middle of hurricane season.”
The one thing Heller, 54, is clear on is that he’s not retiring.
“I’m just retiring as an on-air broadcast meteorologist. I’m retiring from that part of the business. It’s
been the same thing for 35 years, you know?” he said. “I’ve changed TV stations but, really, when you look at it, it’s been the same job. I went from a blue wall, to a green wall, to a video wall in those 35 years but you’re still in front of it and you talk for a few minutes. And, outside of a few crazy days, like Hurricane Harvey and severe weather days, it’s pretty repetitive. There’s a lot of partly cloudy, warm and humid days — over and over and over.
“My intention is to find something where I can at least be of service of some way to the public, because that’s why I got into the business in the beginning was to serve the public.” ‘It was rip and read’
Growing up in Dubuque, Iowa, Heller originally thought he wanted to be a news anchor and studied communications at the city’s Clarke College. “I was looking for a news internship, and I knocked on the door of our little TV station, KDUB-TV, and I said, ‘Do you have any news internships?’ They said, ‘Well, we’re trying to fill a weekend weather job.
“He said, ‘What do you know about the weather?’ I said, ‘Well, nothing.’ But it was rip and read, from the National Weather Service, and that was the job.”
After more than two years at KDUB, Heller finally got his chance to move into a combo news and weather reporting gig at a station in Rockford, Ill. “I hated it,” he recalled. “I knew as soon as I took the job it just wasn’t me. Going to city council meetings. I remember doing court trials and just sitting there for days following the same trial over and over.
“I looked forward to doing (weather on) the weekends,” he continued. “Then KDUB called me and said, ‘Would you come back and do 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. weather for us?’… That’s when I decided, ‘OK, this is going to be my career path.’ ” Coming to Texas
He then pursued a broadcast meteorology degree and moved to stations in Jefferson City, Mo., and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, markets that are larger than Dubuque. Then he moved into the meteorological big leagues when he jumped to KDFW, the Fox station in Dallas-Fort Worth, where he remained for eight years.
All of this gives him a particular perspective on the HoustonDallas rivalry. “The one thing I miss about Dallas is the weather,” he said. “Severe weather happened more often, not that I would wish that on the community. But, as somebody who forecasts it, I enjoy that challenge. … We (in Houston) have a couple of winter events … but it’s rare. Forecasting the dry line (in Dallas) as opposed to the sea breeze here is more interesting. There was a little more variety in terms of weather.”
Though it’s not like Houston — with its tropical storms, hurricanes, flooding and Saharan dust clouds — is boring.
“It’s been fun to do both,” he said. “I always say that it doesn’t matter what weather pattern we’re in, I get tired of it after three days.”
That’s why he says he wouldn’t be cut out to be a weatherman in a city with more placid weather, like San Diego. “I’m a data guy,” he said. “I like taking numbers and helping them make sense for the viewer, taking complicated weather patterns and trying to figure out how do I explain this to people. That’s what I like.”
It’s the data that made him different from his popular predecessor, former KTRK weatherman Ed Brandon.
“(Heller) had big shoes to fill but he definitely managed to do that,” said Mike McGuff, who runs a blog on local broadcasting and was at KTRK when Heller was hired. “Heller was different because he was more of the scientist weather guy … and was there to help you understand the weather.
“Ed Brandon was considered a weathercaster, not a chief meteorologist,” he continued. “This was the first time channel 13 had a chief meteorologist. I remember that was the whole plan was to replace Brandon, who was extremely popular, so they couldn’t copy that. They had to bring in someone with a new positioning. (Heller) has that scholarly look to him. He looks more like what you think a guy working out at the National Weather Service might look.”
Wendy Granato, KRTK’s vicepresident of news and digital content, said what she appreciates about Heller is his sense of calm. “What’s distinctive about Tim is his uncanny ability to remain calm and collected in the most trying, serious, even life or death situations,” she said in an email. “I am most proud of the way Tim and all of our meteorologists handled Hurricane Harvey.”
Given all this, it’s no surprise perhaps that viewers sometimes want Heller to explain his take on climate change but that’s not a discussion he engages in. “It’s a political hot button for a lot of people. My job is to tell you what the weather is like for the next 10 days,” he said. “I’m very clear that this my job. … When I go to a dentist, who’s got a medical degree, I don’t ask him about my gall bladder. When I go to a doctor for my physical, I don’t ask him to look at my toothache. They are related, but they’re different.
“I don’t study climatology. I don’t have access to all the computer models that climatologists do. I haven’t had time to study the mountains of data that are out there. I have a personal opinion … but my day-to-day job is to tell you what tomorrow is going to be like.” What now?
Though Heller is not certain what he and his family are going to be doing after he leaves in a few months — “we may take a little vacation,” he said — but he does have a fantasy.
“My wife and I always joke that our dream would be to open up a coffee shop, wine bar and art gallery on the beach — we only open it when we want to,” he said with a laugh. “I’m kind of moving forward with a plan B, but I’m at the same time opening myself up to opportunities.
“I would love to travel more. My wife and I are hoping to at least find something that allows us to travel a little bit more,” he said. “Spending more time with family. All of those boring, stereotypical things that people say they want to do.”
Even though he’s tired of the workaday grind, Heller says he wouldn’t change much of what he has experienced. “It’s been an incredible career,” he summed up.
But he’s really looking forward to experiencing Houston weather without having to report on it.
“Not having to worry about how we cover the weather, and actually getting to enjoy it,” he said with a smile. “Sitting on my back porch watching a thunderstorm. That, to me, is a great day.”