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Info
- Duty Weather Manager at Met OfficeEnvironmental Services | London, United Kingdom, GBSummary
I'm a specialist forecaster working for the Met Office at the BBC Weather Centre. I love working in the fast-paced media environment that also allows me to indulge in my love of weather and meteorology. Get me started talking about weather and you won't be able to shut me up!
In my spare time I dabble in photography. I also love skiing and roller-blading, live music and comedy.
Experience- Jan 2011 - PresentDuty Weather Manager / Met Office
I am a specialist forecaster working for the Met Office at the BBC Weather Centre. It is currently located at Television Centre in west London, but we are moving very soon to our new home in Broadcasting House in central London.
I lead a team of broadcast meteorologists who work with me at the Weather Centre, and I also provide briefings to presenters working across the UK for BBC Nations and Regions.
I regularly broadcast on BBC local radio, and occasionally present the weather on television.
- Aug 2009 - Jan 2011Broadcaster / Met Office
Regular broadcasting on BBC local radio.
Supporting a team of broadcast meteorologists working at the BBC Weather Centre. - Nov 2007 - Aug 2009Meteorologist / MeteoGroup
Weather forecasting for a range of commercial customers in the media, transport and energy sectors
- May 2007 - Oct 2007Forecaster / Met Office
Forecasting for civil aviation customers and a range of commercial customers in the retail, energy and transport sectors.
Completed units 1 to 6 of the Level 4 Weather Forecasting NVQ.
- Oct 2002 - Dec 2006Broadcast Assistant / Met Office
Supporting a team of broadcast meteorologists working at the BBC Weather Centre.
Regular broadcasting on BBC local radio. - Feb 1997 - Sept 2002Customer Assistant / Tesco PLC
Worked a range of departments, but in particular behind the Deli and Butchery counters, and on checkouts.
At the Havant store, whilst working as a customer assistant in 2002, I achieved the store's first ever 100% mystery shopper score for checkouts.
Education-
2007 - 2007Met Office CollegeCivil Forecasting Course
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1999 - 2002The University of ReadingBachelor of Science (BSc) in Meteorology
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1997 - 1999Havant College
Additional Information-
Websites:
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Interests:skiing, roller-blading, digital photography, baking, (live) music, travel
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Posts
- Feb 15, 13
There are some amazing vistas of London to be had already; Primrose Hill and by the Royal Observatory in Greenwich Park just two such viewpoints that I recommend. Yesterday however I was lucky to venture upwards to the latest – and highest – viewpoint in London: the Shard.
The journey to the viewing floors takes two lifts, but hardly any time as they zip upwards at 15mph (fast for a lift!). You get out on the 68th floor, and climb one further flight to the indoor viewing gallery and the breath-taking view. You can climb a further three flights of stairs (or take the lift) to the 72nd floor and the open-air viewing gallery, so there is plenty of space and the option of fresh air or indoor warmth!
You then are presented with a familiar city from an unfamiliar perspective, and it is definitely a must-see. We got to the top before sunset and stayed there until after dusk, seeing the sun set over the city which then became a sea of sparkling lights. Looking down you can see ribbons of railway lines with snake-like trains running along them.
The challenge is to see just how many of the landmarks you can find: from Greenwich, the Thames Barrier and the Olympic Park in the east, across Canary Wharf, the city and St Paul’s, and out towards Battersea Power Station in the west past Buckingham Palace, the London Eye and the Houses of Parliament. Across the northern horizon the arch of Wembley Stadium can be seen beyond the BT Tower, and the hills of Hampstead Heath, Primrose Hill and Alexandra Palace rise gently above the city’s rooftops.
- Feb 15, 13
Seemingly unrelated to tonight’s passage of asteroid 2012 DA14, a meteor streaked across the sky above the Ural Mountains in Russia this morning with dramatic results.
In this modern day and age, is doesn’t take long for footage of such events to make it onto the internet and around the world. This is a good thing, especially for scientific research.
The blog Bad Astronomy is keeping their page about the event updated as much as possible, especially with some astounding eyewitness videos.
There are better videos, but here is one I found quite eerie. The meteor streaks across the sky around 4 minutes 40 seconds into the video, and the loud explosion follows at about the seven-minute mark.
Brilliantly, there are already meteor-themed memes appearing. Such as Putin riding the meteor’s trail, natch.
Click on the image for more videos and photos (in Russian).
- Feb 14, 13
I never like to let Valentine’s Day pass without marking it in some manner, but having a lie-in, relaxing day and some good food and conversation is much preferred to coming home from a stressful day at work to a bunch of flowers. Not that I wouldn’t be grateful for the flowers, of course…
Today it was yummy Italian food in a local restaurant. This time last year the setting was Madrid. A walk around the city, the Parque del Retiro for coffee, tapas for lunch and a Mexican restaurant for dinner. A beautiful city to explore, although many layers of clothes were needed as it barely rose a few degrees above freezing during the day! The restaurant was called “La Mordida” and is worth a visit if you ever find yourself in Europe’s third-largest city.
- Feb 13, 13
Sandy made landfall as a post-tropical cyclone near Brigantine, New Jersey at about 2330 UTC on 29th October 2012. The National Hurricane Centre in Miami, Florida have now completed their report into the storm, which you can read here. To date it’s the largest report they’ve published, running to 157 pages. Here follows the report’s introduction, summarising Sandy’s evolution and the disruption the cyclone caused.
Sandy was a classic late-season hurricane in the southwestern Caribbean Sea. The cyclone made landfall as a category 1 hurricane (on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale) in Jamaica, and as a 100kt category 3 hurricane in eastern Cuba before quickly weakening to a category 1 hurricane while moving through the central and northwestern Bahamas. Sandy underwent a complex evolution and grew considerably in size while over the Bahamas, and continued to grow despite weakening into a tropical storm north of those islands. The system restrengthened into a hurricane while it moved northeastward, parallel to the coast of the southeastern United States, and reached a secondary peak intensity of 85kt while it turned northwestward toward the mid-Atlantic states. Sandy weakened somewhat and then made landfall as a post-tropical cyclone near Brigantine, New Jersey with 70kt maximum sustained winds. Because of its tremendous size, however, Sandy drove a catastrophic storm surge into the New Jersey and New York coastlines. Preliminary U.S. damage estimates are near $50 billion, making Sandy the second-costliest cyclone to hit the United States since 1900. There were at least 147 direct deaths recorded across the Atlantic basin due to Sandy, with 72 of these fatalities occurring in the mid-Atlantic and northeastern United States. This is the greatest number of U.S. direct fatalities related to a tropical cyclone outside of the southern states since Hurricane Agnes in 1972.
- Feb 12, 13
The title of this post is a Russian proverb, so the internet says.
It was Shrove Tuesday today, and Borough Market held pancake races in aid of charity. The participants were very competitive! At least two runners fell, one of whom could blame in part his poor choice of footwear. He wasn’t badly hurt, thankfully. The event was a lot of fun to watch… the Olympic effect hasn’t yet worn off completely.
Later, it was time to make some. Mixing flour, eggs and water is easy, but sometimes the convenience of a ready-made batter mix is hard to resist. Last year it worked perfectly well. One expects however that a well-known brand could be relied upon to generate a decent pancake or two. Sadly the well-known brand produced more than a few failures, and the following day a number of other disgruntled customers could be seen expressing their dissatisfaction at on the aforementioned brand’s social media pages. Ah well, not as much effort saved as originally hoped!
Spotted: London’s mayor Boris Johnson waiting patiently at the traffic lights on his bicycle. Wearing a Union Flag-emblazoned woolly hat.
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Tweets
- RT @NSSL: 40yrs today since Union City, OK storm, and NSSL discovered the Tornadic Vortex Signature in Doppler data. Read: http://t.co/lX3C…
- BBC News - RAF jets scrambled after incident http://t.co/TstxhIWqgp
- Excited to be invited by Vic Morgan @swindonred onto The Late Show, BBC Local Radio in the South West on Monday 27th! http://t.co/nywejLKQ99
- Still can't decide if I like this Beady Eye tune because or in spite of Dave Sitek's magic touch #music
- Hats off the the helpful person at @TescoBankNews who solved my card issue swiftly and without fuss. Top customer service :) @UKTescoMay 23, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- RT @meteo_france: #Météo #France froid record : La neige tombera sur tous les massifs dès 600m, records de froid en vue, pluie, vent et n…May 23, 13 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- This (new to me) account is worth an early #ff! "@GooglePoetics: "I thought of you today" #GooglePoems http://t.co/2WSOzyn0o5"
- RT @GooglePoetics: take me to the river take me to your heart take me to a useless website #GooglePoems http://t.co/9qQTn5Ek7z
- It's pronounced Gilchrist or Gilly in my world, not Jilchrist or Jilly! Nor Weatherjil, even... #gif
- RT @NWSNorman: Impressive post-tornado images from @googlemaps showing the path of the Newcastle-Moore-OKC EF-5 tornado! http://t.co/H5HBuA…
- Ground Control to Major Tim :)) http://t.co/WL9XNr5keG
- RT @GingerKnits: Horrified by attack in #woolwich & saddend by bigoted responses. Countering with sharing what I love about multiculturalis…
- RT @jimmyc42: WE can and should build better. Cars were thrown into schools and on top of medical centers #hardtoprotectfromthat http://t.…
- RT @kevinmmcgrath: GOES East (-13) has stopped functioning with no ETA on a return-to-service. Status messages: http://t.co/fihXRSHJTH #goe…
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