Josh Morgerman is a modern-day Clark Kent: by day he’s a buttoned-up ad exec, by night he’s a daredevil who travels to dangerous places where hurricanes rage.
“I’m basically two people in one,” says Morgerman, 49. “I am a brand and advertising consultant with Symblaze, my own company, that’s been going on 20 years parallel to my life as a hurricane chaser. I’ve got these two passions: One is brands and one is hurricanes. I didn’t want to make a choice, so I went with both.”
Morgerman is the star of “Hurricane Man,” a new series premiering Sunday at 9 p.m. on the Science Channel. The eight episodes track him “chasing” storms such as Hurricane Michael, a category 5, in Florida in 2018. The show also focuses on local communities as they prepare for the worst and make rescue efforts.
His mission, he says, is twofold. The first is to document the damage.
“I’m there to collect data, and bring back images and show the world what happened,” says Morgerman, who lives in LA. “When people see the pictures from the Bahamas or Florida, that’s when the aid comes. People need to see pictures. They can’t just read an article; they have to see those flattened neighborhoods to understand, ‘Wow, this is bad, these people need help.’”
But his secondary objective is more personal. Born in Huntington, NY, Morgerman says he’s been obsessed with hurricanes his entire life.
“It’s like a mental bug that you’re born with,” he says. “I grew up on Long Island and when a hurricane would come up the coast I’d just get crazy excited about it, even as a toddler. Why that is, I don’t know. You’d have to be a dummy not to be scared, but my curiosity and fascination slightly outweighs the fear.”
Each time Morgerman chases a hurricane, he brings food and water so that he’s not a burden on a recovering local population. He stays safe by finding high ground in concrete buildings and waiting out the winds in bathrooms or under a mattress. As a result, he’s never been seriously injured.
And although he’s Harvard-educated, he’s never been formally trained in meteorology. Morgerman says he likes it that way.
“When I speak at conferences, one of the first things I say is, ‘I am not a scientist.’ I am to scientists what those bomb-sniffing dogs are to security agents. I hunt down data in the field that would otherwise be impossible to get, and then scientists use that.”
Hurricane chasing was a “very expensive hobby,” he says, until he started making TV appearances in the UK around 2013.
“There’s two aspects to my work. One is the scientific part and the other is, I’m a TV personality. For the science part no one funds me. I do it because I’m passionate about it. But the National Hurricane Center and other organizations use my data. I make my living on TV — for example, starring in ‘Hurricane Man.’”
He’s rescued people in storms such as Typhoon Haiyan and Dorian by virtue of being able-bodied and knowing what to do. But his most important work is storytelling, he says.
“Part of recovery is keeping the story alive. I talk to a lot of my followers from Florida — Hurricane Michael was 11 months ago. That area is still really hurting, and my followers there tell me they feel forgotten. The nation has moved on from the story; they’re not getting help. I have enough media presence that that’s something I can help with.”
“Hurricane Man” Series premiere 9 p.m. Sunday on Science Channel
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