WDSU meteorologist Damon Singleton remembers some of the best career advice he ever got.
Fresh out of the U.S. Navy, he had just started a new job working at the station alongside the legendary meteorologist Margaret Orr — a figure he had grown up watching on TV.
Singleton had never worked on-camera before but was eager to share his scientific knowledge with the community.
“It was really hot, so I was talking about the difference between long-wave and short-wave heat,” he says. “And when I finished, Margaret said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ She said I sounded like a professor in a science class, instead of explaining it in a way people could understand.”
Singleton learned a valuable lesson that day that he still thinks about nearly two decades later: Instead of delving into the nerdier aspects of weather, he needed to use his time on screen to give people practical weather advice.
That’s something Orr herself perfected over her 45 years with the station, telling viewers when to wear sunscreen, pack an umbrella or evacuate ahead of a looming hurricane.
Orr — whose final broadcast was March 29 — has helped New Orleanians navigate all kinds of extreme weather events that have hit South Louisiana, from tornadoes to wildfires to hurricanes like Andrew, Katrina and Ida.
Margaret Orr getting ready for her ride as the 2024 Honorary Muse in the Krewe of Muses parade
Through her conversational, enthusiastic reporting style, she’s become a larger-than-life local celebrity — characterized by her signature red hair and blazers as bright as her fun-loving personality.
Whether it was as a weather forecaster, a colleague or a friend, Orr has consistently been there for her community with genuine care. It has not been uncommon for Orr to become emotional, wearing her heart on her sleeve, as she urges viewers to heed her warnings.
“It became very personal to her,” says Norman Robinson, a former WDSU news anchor and longtime friend of Orr. “She was always concerned about whether people were taking her advice."
"She took her job as a meteorologist very seriously, he adds. "It was the ultimate public service to her.”
Orr’s decades-long career as a meteorologist and chief positive mental attitude cheerleader of New Orleans was seemingly written in the stars.
Born and raised in New Orleans, her father was a civil engineer and her mother, a kindergarten teacher. Orr got some of her spunk and personality from her mother, who was skilled at “making really good friends."
But Margaret was born with a sunny disposition. As a child, she says she would often wake up singing, “Oh, What A Beautiful Morning.”
“How corny was I?” she says with a laugh.
But that impossibly positive outlook would stick with her, even during the most difficult times.
In 1965, when Hurricane Betsy blew the roof off her childhood home, she was mesmerized by her view of the sky when the eye of the hurricane passed overhead.
A young Margaret Orr
That kicked off a lifelong obsession with weather events — and solidified a remarkable ability to always look for the positive in virtually any scenario.
Orr graduated from Louise S. McGehee School and then went to LSU. During one summer break, the way she tells it, she didn’t have anything to do, so she headed to Waco, Texas, to work at a TV station.
As a natural storyteller with innate charm, she was immediately hooked.
“I just went, ‘This is the most fun, ever,’” she says.
Officially bitten by the news bug, she graduated in 1975 and moved up to Charleston, South Carolina and got a job working at a TV station as a receptionist.
In the evenings, she tagged along with the news crew and learned how to use equipment so she could film segments. Eventually, a position opened up and she worked there for a few years before relocating to Baton Rouge, and then eventually getting a call from WDSU.
At 25, with her “knees shaking,” she returned back to New Orleans.
It was 1979, and little did she know she would become a fixture at the TV station for the next 45 years, especially after a daunting first week.
Orr spent her first day entirely outside in the rain, her red hair drenched.
"It was hard,” she says. “It was a different atmosphere — very professional, very demanding. I didn’t know if I was ready.”
She remembers thinking, “I’m not going to make it,” she says. “But I did.”
Margaret Orr at the WDSU Channel 6 station
Over the years, she would become a trusted source of news and weather, helping guide the city through some of its toughest times, including Hurricane Katrina.
New Orleans City Council President Helena Moreno, who covered breaking news at the station with Orr before entering politics, remembers working with Orr covering the storm in August 2005.
While most of the station evacuated, a small skeleton crew, which included Roop Raj, Dan Thomas, Moreno and Orr, remained behind. As conditions worsened they were forced to leave the TV set and seek shelter at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside Hotel.
“Everything was leaking, and we were just trying to take care of each other,” Moreno says, adding, “the whole hotel was swaying.”
Orr, meanwhile, was desperate for the storm to blow over so she could get outside and start relaying what she saw to her viewers.
“She just really, really wanted to be out there,” Moreno says. “Margaret just has this very big sense of duty.”
In the aftermath of the storm, even though Orr’s own home was badly damaged, she still worked around the clock to deliver crucial updates, often working 20-hour days.
Orr’s colleagues say she is a perfectionist when it comes to accuracy, a crucial trait for becoming a reliable source of information for people in times of crisis. It's what helped earn her the spot as the station's chief meteorologist in 2009.
“She imparts in all of us the importance of getting it right,” Singleton says. “That translates to people who trust you watching you. People will come back to Channel 6 because they trust what we’re saying.”
As a woman working in news, Orr also broke barriers and paved the way for other young women to enter the profession.
When she first started, there were few career options for women in TV journalism in New Orleans.
Dan Thomas, Dan Milham and Margaret Orr in 2004
But she looked up to Angela Hill, who became the first female anchor at WWL-TV in 1975, and Barbara Walters, who became the first woman to co-anchor a national evening news program a year later.
“She kind of had to be in the wings for some time,” Moreno says. “Being a woman in the industry, particularly back when she started, isn’t easy. But she made her way to the top and she never quit.”
Orr also made it a mission to boost her female co-workers' confidence and help them focus on their talents in the face of sexism or misogyny.
Viewers would sometimes make rude comments to the women who worked at the station about their hair, makeup, weight and general physical appearance.
In those situations, Moreno says having Orr’s support was vital.
“That can be hard to take,” Moreno says. “But Margaret would be like, ‘Let it go. Who cares? Don’t listen to those people. Just do your thing. You’re talented.’ Sometimes you just need that other voice to take away the haters.”
Margaret Orr with Al Hirt
The advice was personal for Orr. She had been there, having had similar feelings of insecurity herself early in her career.
For one, “I had too much personality,” she says. “Back then, you’re supposed to read the prompter and be straight and direct.”
She remembers telling WDSU photographer Dominic Martin about her concerns.
“I’d say, ‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to be,’” she says. “He’d say, ‘You’re doing it. You’re a positive person, you’re a positive light.’”
After that, she understood her purpose: “to be a positive role model, and to be there when the weather is bad, to give people the information they need to stay safe.”
To do that, Orr knew she had to be herself.
“I always said, ‘Be yourself, in everything that you do. Be you. Each one of us is unique and special. Be yourself, but always strive to be better,’” she says.
Margaret Orr during Carnival in her Queen of Cotton Candy outfit
Orr’s penchant for taking her younger co-workers under her wing has earned her the nickname “Mother Meg” among some of her colleagues, who say Orr’s caring personality is as genuine off-camera as it is on TV.
Randi Rousseau, a co-anchor on the morning news, says Orr put her at ease years ago when she was first hired as a fresh-faced intern from Ponchatoula. Orr took her aside and immediately taught her how to use some of the station’s technology, without being asked.
“I was this young 20-something, with no family down here, and she just embraced me as one of her own,” Rousseau says. “She just wants to put you forth on a path of success, from Day 1. She has always just been such a mentor and an icon."
WDSU anchor Travers Mackel says when he started at the station in 2003, “it was people like Margaret who made me feel comfortable, like I belonged.” He says her actions have inspired him to make the effort to reach out to new faces in the newsroom and welcome them.
"I try to talk to every intern, take them to lunch and make them feel comfortable,” he says.
It's that personality, dedication to her craft and love of her community that has struck a chord with New Orleanians. Over the years she’s developed an almost cult-like following locally — with some local shops even selling prayer candles with her face on them.
Soon after she arrived at WDSU, a group of regulars at Good Friends bar in the French Quarter launched an Orr fan club. Eventually, they also formed the Barkus parade, where hundreds of dogs participate in a Carnival procession donning costumes.
Margaret Orr's look is so iconic that people dress as her during Carnival season
Orr, a canine enthusiast herself, has been the longtime emcee of that.
Indeed, Orr loves Carnival, and it loves her back. One of her annual traditions is to dress up as the Queen of Cotton Candy, in an over-the-top pastel pink wig as a tribute to her favorite childhood treat. She wears it on Fat Tuesday, and often breaks out dance moves during the Krewe of Zulu parade.
The Weather Girls, a dance troupe that choreographs routines with umbrellas and rain slickers, also pay tribute to her. And their escorts dress in long red wigs with bangs and colorful pantsuits, like Orr.
“They were all flailing and yelling ‘Margaret!’ It’s pretty crazy,” she says of meeting them along the parade route.
Orr also earned the high distinction of serving as the official Honorary Muse in the Krewe of Muses this year. She rode majestically in its famous glittering shoe float, sporting a new favorite clothing garment, a flowy chiffon robe gifted to her by a drag queen.
When she’s not on the parade route or on TV, Orr still engages with her audience through social media, where viewers often share photos of their gardens — she’s an avid gardener — and pictures their young children have drawn.
She always takes time to respond to individual questions about weather events.
That’s something she plans to continue into retirement, in between training for a triathlon, spending time with her husband and grown children and running through her sprinkler with her grandkids.
“One of the great things about my career is I’ve met so many wonderful people along the way,” Orr says. “You meet real, regular people, and I love them.”
WDSU chief meteorologist Margaret Orr poses at her home in New Orleans, Thursday, Sept. 14, 2023.
As Travers Mackel pointed out in a recent TV segment honoring his coworker, “Margaret was always at her best when people needed her the most.”
That's has been true both on-screen and off. As much as she has been a guiding light for her viewers during weather events, she has also helped her colleagues deal with personal tragedies.
In 2019, Rousseau’s husband was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of bone cancer, and he died within just five months, leaving her to raise two young children as a single parent.
She remembers sitting at home in a state of shock, trying to wrap her head around what had just happened.
And then suddenly there was a knock on her door.
There Orr was with a bougainvillea plant in hand and an “I love you.”
"She’s just so considerate," Rousseau says. “She is someone you will always have as a friend.”
Robinson, too, remembers when Orr stepped up for him during his time of need. Dealing with alcoholism after Hurricane Katrina — a struggle that played out in the public eye — he put his own illustrious career on hold to seek treatment. And Orr was there for him without judgment.
Margaret Orr in her garden
“Margaret reached out to me as a friend and confidante to give me encouragement and solace,” he says. “And she was just there for me to vent to and talk with. There are only a few people in your life that you just really feel comfortable with talking to and sharing your inner most feelings with, and she is that person for me and for many other people.”
He is still struck by her sincerity.
“There was nothing phony, she wasn’t being nosy,” he says. “She wasn’t prodding for info to regurgitate to some other audience. She was generally concerned about my well-being, and I love her and appreciate her for that.”
Mackel says he and many others are better people because of Orr.
“She’s passed the torch of just being a good person, a good citizen, a good journalist and a good coworker,” he says. “She probably doesn’t even realize that, but we all carry those traits because of her.”