He suffered hurricanes, studied them and today he shines as a meteorologist in Houston: Gastón Heredia of Tucuman

When he first boarded a plane, bound for the United States, it was December 2001 and President Fernando de la Rúa was leaving the Casa Rosada by helicopter.

Gastón Heredia, from Tucuman, was 15 at the time, didn’t fully understand the outburst, but knew the family’s decision had been made. He did not imagine that he had come out of a hurricane to enter the others. That devastating Wilma pass awaited him in Miami and, indeed, time dominated.

Don Heredia Sr. worked in Scania and unemployment took him by surprise, as did his wife, a guardian. With four minor children, he didn’t consider too many alternatives. A family friend invited them to try their luck in the North and the man left there, a month before his family. With his life savings, he rented a room in Miami Beach, bought a 1993 Dodge Caravan and got into the job of a mechanic. When he sent for the rest of the clan, the stumbling block: the money for the tickets had been kept in the corralito.

After Christmas, mom and children finally set foot in the USA. They settled in the city of Hialeah, in a valley between Biscayne Bay and the Everglades, a Latin area. While his father, with no knowledge of English, was selling water filters door-to-door, Gastón, the second of four children, enrolled at Miami Springs Senior High School. He looked like “in a movie, in a typical American high school”.

Lockers, cheerleaders, soccer team. Gastón spoke Spanish, but beyond the linguistic distance, he felt an unknown discomfort. He tried to integrate through “football”, the sport he practiced in his native Tucumán, and changed the position of 7 for the defender. His calling was still uncertain.

The following year, when he moved to Doral, a city in Miami-Dade County, he changed schools. He enrolled in the Doral Academy, “a different, semi-private institution, with a more Latin imprint”. The family’s economy began to flourish, his mother found a job in the kitchen of a pizzeria and his father tried articles, printing and washing limousines, eventually establishing himself as a bus driver for a medical company.

In 2005, the devastating Wilma traveling through Cuba, Mexico and the Florida panhandle was an enlightening personal experience. “The intensity of the wind in the windows, the memory of my father trying to cover them, the supermarkets without merchandise, the closed city. All of this was very shocking and left its mark,” says Gastón now from Houston. “Then in 2008 came Hurricane Gustav, power cuts, traffic lights and signs fell. I was struck by the damage that could cause such a thing. And I finished defining my vocation with the documentary. An uncomfortable truthby Davis Guggenheim, on Al Gore’s campaign to educate on global warming. ”

For five years studied meteorology at the University of Florida. After being an intern at Univisión Miami, his first formal job in that field came in 2011, at the Climadata company, founded by the famous meteorologist John Morales. He wrote the weather forecast for the islands of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

In 2012, after a job interview for Univisión, he moved to Colorado. He had been received by the director of the news program Luisa Collins and, despite the insecurity of that shy Argentine who did not know what it was like to be in front of the camera, an opportunity opened up on television. “Today I think about the importance of first opportunities, that someone trusts you more than yourself”, gets excited. “I looked like an insecure child. I learned the hard way. Mine was science, but it was all a matter of practice. “

The first time on air it was “a nightmare”“They made a huge investment to renovate the station building, heads from different cities came for the launch and I was paralyzed, in shock,” he recalls, at 35. “I was not in control of the graphics system, they introduced me as an expert meteorologist, They gave me to the lions. It was a disaster, but that was my fastest way to learn. “

After seven years in Denver and experiences such as forecasts for Boston, Washington, Orlando, Tampa, Wichita, Albuquerque and Las Vegas, in 2019 came the move to Houston. Today Heredia works as head of meteorology for Univisión in that city and leads a team of five meteorologists. He can be seen humorously explaining the weather conditions and getting rid of some didactic tricks, like cook an egg in about 60 minutes inside a vehicle “at a temperature of 158 degrees Fahrenheit”.

There are no fixed times for the man who sleeps little and dreams of climatic phenomena. The Univisión Meteorological Center works almost 24 hours a day and the obsession does not allow for prolonged disconnection. Every day you can see him on the news of Univisión 45, from 11:30 to 12:00, but this is just one example of his general role: his team’s mission is to make predictions for different cities.

The story of Mr. Hurricane he is similar to his countryman Violeta Yas, the woman from Mar del Plata who won four Emmy Awards and works a few meters from the studios where Jimmy Fallon leads, In New York. Miss Meteorology immigrated as a child with her family in the 1980s and ended up on NBC.

Weather TV presenter, Yas graduated from the University of Mississippi and today shares a profession with Heredia. An entire Argentine legion shines in local media of this caliber: Belén Smole, for example, is the Buenos Aires graduate of the UCA (9 Emmy Awards on her shelf) hosting NBC Philadelphia.

From Denver to Houston (1,600 kilometers), Heredia’s life took a nostalgic turn. Now he misses the dawn in the mountains, in a dry, anti-frizz climate. In the great metropolis of Texas, everything is humid and a tiring pace of work for Gastón, who finds refuge in the race between the trees and the thousand curves of Memorial Park.

An old teammate who is leaking water at his base connects this Atlético Tucumán fan with Argentina. It is a container that her grandmother gave to her father and has survived yet another number of trips, even across the hemisphere. “I order yerba through Amazon and drink amaro every morning at home,” she laughs. “My melody? I don’t speak Tucuman anymore, I went back to my province twice and now I hear them speak differently.”

In Mayan mythology “hunracán” (one leg) the hurricane is the god of fire, wind and storms, the heart of the sky. GH no longer fears that strange divinity. For his dedication, he has earned 9 regional Emmys, with environmental stories or in the announcer or meteorologist category. His impeccable track record includes volunteering at the National Hurricane Center for Spanish translation.

-Do you use an umbrella or are you one of those who prefer the freedom of getting wet?

-Use. The first thing I do when I wake up is to check the radar. The day can be extremely dry, but I still do it, instinctively. One day I decided to buy an umbrella and it saved me many times.

-Why do you like to predict hurricanes more than tornadoes?

I love the hurricane season. It is something that generates adrenaline, a sweet and sour taste. Unlike hurricanes, tornadoes pass within seconds and those days are more stressful for me. We know there is a tornado risk, the area, the time frame, but we don’t know the minute by second or the specific point. There you have to be aware second by second. It is like an earthquake as there is no exact way to know where and when. There is little room to get the message across to the community. Conversely, with hurricanes, you can mentally prepare yourself, keep track of the days leading up to a storm, have more preparation tools, carry that message to people, and give more interpretation to information.

– Did you manage to avoid the hail in the car or take advantage of your profession like that?

-I once felt a certain advantage. I had to change my shift and cover early in the morning. There was the possibility of severe thunderstorms. I saw the radar, the torrential rain, the electric shocks and when I checked I realized there was going to be hail. My car was 25 minutes from the storm in the town of Katy. I wrote to my friend Beto, asked him to put it in the house and I notified several colleagues. The size of the hail ended up being half an inch. Another time, on a Saturday, while monitoring the risk of tornadoes, I see the map in full transmission and they mark the polygon where it was heading. It was in the area where a friend lived. I texted another friend in two seconds. The madman thanked me.