Neil Frank, former hurricane center chief who improved public outreach on storms, has died

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Neil Frank, a former head of the National Hurricane Center credited with increasing the country's readiness for major storms, died Wednesday. He was 94.

Frank led the hurricane center from 1974 to 1987, the longest-serving director in its history.

“He gets tremendous credit for the being the first one to go out of his way and reach out and make the connection between the National Hurricane Center and the emergency managers,” said meteorologist Max Mayfield, who served as the hurricane center's director from 2000-2007.

“He taught me that it’s not all about the forecast,” Mayfield said. “A perfect forecast is no good if people don’t take immediate action.”

Frank’s son, Ron Frank, said in a Facebook post that his father died at home a few days after going into hospice care.

KHOU-TV in Houston, where Frank spent two decades as chief meteorologist after leaving the hurricane center, first reported his death. The station referred an Associated Press call for comment to CBS, whose spokeswoman declined comment but directed the AP to Ron Frank’s post.

When Frank started at the National Hurricane Center, advances with weather satellites were helping forecasters to better predict the location and direction of a storm. Frank worked to make that information more accessible to residents in hurricane-vulnerable areas, said Mayfield. He also regularly appeared on television to give updates on storms and advice on staying safe.

“He was so passionate and you could just feel his enthusiasm but also sense of warning — that he wanted people to take action,” Mayfield said. “He was very animated, spoke with his hands a lot. And if you’d play it on fast-forward, he’d look like a juggler sometimes.”

Frank was skeptical that human actions, such as the burning of oil, gas and coal, cause climate change, Mayfield said. In a video posted to YouTube titled “Is Climate Change Real?” he instead attributed warming to the planet’s natural and cyclical weather patterns. Scientists today overwhelmingly agree that burning of fossil fuels is the primary driver of planet-warming emissions that are causing more frequent, costly and deadly extreme weather around the world.

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