An Australian weather presenter was forced to halt his live Tuesday morning broadcast when he suffered a heartbreaking panic attack on air.
“ABC News Breakfast” weatherman Nate Byrne was in the middle of his spiel around 6:30 a.m. local time when he suddenly paused, footage showed.
“I’m going to need to stop for a second,”the veteran meteorologist told viewers as his voice trembled.
“Some of you may know that I occasionally get affected by some panic attacks, and actually that’s happening right now,” he explained.
Byrne called on co-host Lisa Millar to take over the broadcast.
The camera quickly panned back to Millar as Byrne recovered off-camera.
He later came back to the show and apologized for stepping off.
“Sorry if I gave anybody a bit of a scare,” he told the audience.
Co-host Michael Rowland joked that he was only nervous that he might have to jump in and report the weather in lieu of his expert colleague.
Rowland shared a video of the incident on his Instagram later Tuesday and assured audiences that his co-host was “doing OK.
“Thank you for all the supportive messages (There have been so many. What a wonderful audience we have!),” he wrote, adding that he gave Byrne a “big bear hug off camera.
“As a team, we’ll always have your back, Nate. Always,” Rowland said.
Byrne published an article in 2022 discussing his struggle with on-air panic attacks, which he described as “absolutely terrifying.
“As I stood there under the studio lights, talking to people having their morning coffee and wiping sleep from their eyes, my heart was racing, I was gasping for breath and sweat was pouring out of every pore as my brain screamed ‘RUN!’” Byrne said of his first brush with serious anxiety.
The experience, he explained, changed his perspective on mental health.
The meteorologist now relies on certain tools to make it through moments of panic in order to continue doing his job, he wrote.
