FCN weather team changes: Tim Deegan gives up 11 p.m. slot; Lew Turner steps in, stays all night

After almost 36 years of delivering evening weather forecasts on TV, First Coast News' Tim Deegan has stepped away from the network's 11 p.m. broadcast, though he's still doing reports earlier in the day.

"Good Morning Jacksonville's" Lew Turner has taken over that 11 p.m. shift, while somehow still managing to anchor the station's morning show from 4:30 to 7 a.m.

"That is a 'wow' schedule," Deegan said during a joint phone interview. "Hopefully, Lewis, that'll be in your book one day."

"It's a chapter," Turner said.

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Both men said they're making the changes for personal reasons.

Deegan is ready to dial things back after all these years and asked for the change so he — a surfer and runner and "morning person" — could more easily spend more mornings in the water and on the beach.

For Turner, doing both the 11 p.m. weather and the 4:30 a.m. morning show means he'll work the overnight shift, starting at 10 p.m. He embraced that change so he could spend more time with his family, which includes Oliver, 9, and Ruby, 6.

His plan? "I’ll sleep when they go to school and wake up when they get back," he said.

Turner grew up in coastal South Carolina and Georgia around boats and fishing. His father, who's almost 80, runs a marina on Fripp Island, S.C.

After graduating from the University of South Carolina, he worked in TV in that state, then got a broadcast meteorology and atmospheric sciences degree at Mississippi State. He came to First Coast News in 2010 to do weather but soon found himself anchoring and doing news in the field. He went to "Good Morning Jacksonville" in 2015.

Deegan said Turner is versatile and accomplished: “He’s being humble. Like at many places, if they find out you have other skills as well and you're good at it, they’ll grab you. I'm not saying that just because Lew’s on the phone."

Tim Deegan still doing forecasts between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m.

Deegan, though giving up the late-night spot, will still be doing weather forecasts at 5. 5:30, 6 and 7 p.m. “People who have been irritated with me in the past, they’ll still have plenty of opportunity," he joked.

Deegan's last contract with the station expired at the end of May. He's thought about retiring, he said, but there's just one problem.

"I still dig forecasting, I'm still a weather freak. I like to talk weather with whoever’s listening. Even a dog," he said.

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Deegan, whose wife is former news anchor and current mayoral candidate Donna Deegan, began his local career in 1982 on "Good Morning Jacksonville" shortly after graduating from Texas A&M with a meteorology degree. It was a young show, and so was he.

"I was green. They told me that they were going to give me six months because no one’s going to be watching for the first six months anyway," Deegan said. He laughed: “Throw that surfer kid in there and let’s see what happens!”

What happened was he became a familiar face in Jacksonville and something of a local institution. Which means people always want to talk weather with him. For him it's not just idle chatter.

He laughed again: "Do you really care? Because if you do, I will talk as long as you want about weather."

Turner, too, said he's fine, as a TV journalist, with being approached in public: "People say, 'Sorry to bother you.' I say it’s not a bother: It means you’re watching, and you trust me.”

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Jacksonville TV meteorologist Tim Deegan gives up 11 p.m. slot at FCN