Laurence John Thomas West, the son of a sailor, was brought up in Portsmouth. His ambition was to join the Navy, but when he applied as a boy he was told he was “a few days too old”. Instead, in 1924, he joined the RAF as an aircraft apprentice and was posted to RAF Cranwell as a coppersmith, an occupation which earned him the nickname ‘Knocker West’. In 1933, he applied for pilot training and was soon flying a wide variety of aircraft.
…Baker, Trevor
Trevor was always affectionately known as Trevor ‘The Weather’ Baker.
…Scott, Jack
Jack was a popular BBC TV forecaster (17th May 1969 – 4th May 1983) and for many years was the senior forecaster. He also presented forecasts on BBC Radio. He was a Met Office employee (1941 – 1983), working on RAF stations (1941 – 1968).
…Edwards, Barbara
Barbara was born in 1939. She joined the Met Office in 1957 and until 1962 worked in the library and editing department at Harrow, sub-editing and proofreading meteorological publications; in 1962, she moved to Bracknell HQ to undertake similar work. From 1963 until 1970, she worked as a forecaster at Gatwick and Heathrow Airport. Barbara was based at the London Weather Centre forecasting for commerce and industry (1970 – 1979) and has the distinction of being the first female national BBC TV forecaster, appearing from January 1974 until June 1978; she was also heard on BBC Radio during the same period. She was the BBC One Christmas Day weather presenter once, in 1975.
…McCaskill, Ian
Ian was born John Robertson McCaskill in Glasgow. His national service took him into the RAF and in 1959, he joined the Meteorological Corps. He left in 1961 to join the Met Office and later postings included Prestwick Airport, Malta and the Manchester Weather Centre.
…Fox, Everton
Everton was born in Cambridge in 1964. He worked in the Department of Social Security as a civil servant before joining the Met Office in 1991. He spent a year at the Norwich Weather Centre. Having completed the forecaster foundation programme in March 2000, which included on-the-job training at RAF Marham in Norfolk, he went on to become a forecaster at the London Weather Centre where he worked for three months.
…Young, Helen
Helen was born in Crawley but raised in East Grinstead and Old Coulsdon/Purley, Surrey. She graduated with a BSc (hons) in geography from Bristol University in 1990 and joined the Met Office in September 1990, working in the commercial services division as a consultant, providing climatology reports for the building and transport industries. She wrote climatological reports for county councils and often had to go out to rural locations and report on whether proposed road routes would be fog prone or frost prone. Helen commented: “It was a great job, but you were certainly less popular than being a TV weather forecaster!” She trained as a forecaster in November 1992 and moved to Bristol Weather Centre in February 1993. She appeared as a forecaster on local TV for HTV for one week as emergency cover. Later, she would move to BBC Bristol, appearing on Points West.
…Foord, Bert
Bert was employed by the Met Office from 1947 until 1990. He was a BBC Radio/TV weatherman from 1963 until December 1973.
…Cowling, George
George joined the Met Office in 1939 as a met assistant with No 4 Bomber Group at FAF Yorkshire. From 1942 until 1953, he worked as an RAF forecaster in the UK, Normandy, Belgium, Holland and Germany.
…Dowling, Aoife
Aoife joined RTÉ in the late-1990s, working as a continuity announcer on both television channels, though mainly on RTÉ Network 2. She later went on to present RTÉ weather forecasts – on both channels – from 2002. She left RTÉ in summer 2003.
Armour, Downie
Downie was a BBC TV national weather forecaster (1956 – 1958). He died in 1979.
Stuart, Vivien
Vivien was born in 1957. Following university, she accepted a place on the Broadcast Journalist Training Scheme in 1975, which led to several years working as a studio manager.
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