The alternative named storms for 2017-18

[xmetman]

As a tribute to all the BBC Weather presenters of the past, I think it would be only right and fitting that because they’re now no longer employed by the Met Office but rather by the BBC, that they should be immortalized in the named storms for the coming season 2017-18.

I notice that the Met Office are a bit slow on publishing the list for this coming season on their website, so I thought that I would give them a list of possible Christian names that they could use from BBC weather presenters past and present. The only trouble is that I’m having a problem with a candidate for ‘O’, maybe you can help?

• Alex Deakin now at Exeter and doing a grand job.
  
• Bill Giles or perhaps Bert Foord, Barbara Edwards or perhaps Bee Tucker.
  
• Carol Kirkwood everyone’s favourite especially the Daily Express or maybe Chris Fawkes?
  
• Darren Bett or shall we have Dan Corbett?
  
• Elizabeth Saary or perhaps Everton Fox?
  
• Francis Wilson he’s the only F as far as I can see!
  
• George Cowley the first or what about another old timer Graham Parker?
  
• Helen Willetts or maybe Heather Reid or even Helen Young?
  
• Ian McCaskill the inimitable or maybe it should be Isobel Lang – what ever happened to her?
  
• John Hammond one of the best of the lot, and rumour has it that he is still around. Stiff competition though from the likes of Jim Bacon, Jo Wheeler, Jay Wynne, John Kettley he’s a weatherman, and of course Jack Scott.
  
• Keith Best (wow, I had to think hard and long about this guy and I can still picture him).
  
• Louise Lear apparently hails from my home city  and I just remembered Liam Dutton now on Channel 4.
  
• Michael Fish who else? I hope Storm Michael is not too strong, or is it Matt Taylor?
  
• Nick Miller or Nina Ridge (another meteorological one)?
  
• O
  
• Phil Avery, Peter Gibbs, Peter Cockcroft, Paul Hudson or maybe Penny Tranter?
  
• Rob McElwee, Richard Edgar or maybe Richard Angwin?
  
• Stav Danaos. There are a lot of other possibilities here – Suzanne Charlton, Susan Powell, Sarah Keith-Lucas, Simon King, Sarah Blizzard (I’m sure she must have changed her name).
  
• Tomasz Schafernaker, Trevor Baker (you need to be old to remember him) or even Tori Lacey?
  
• Wendy Hurrell (I never heard of this lady but I’m so glad I found her).
  

It maybe that by next weekend they’ll need a new list, because we could have a very early entry for the first named storm of the 2017-18 season.

[Richard Dixon]

Can we have B for Bernard Davey. He was one of my favourites growing up watching the weather along with McCaskill. I didn't care much for the egos of Fish and Giles...

Isobel Lang can be found on Sky News Weather. She also appears not to have aged at all...!

How about Fred Talbot for F - actually on second thoughts...

Richard

[Trevor Harley]

I had lunch with John He's a weatherman Kettley a couple of years ago, and he was absolutely charming. And full of good weather stories too.

It's just a rumour about Graham Parker.

[Richard Dixon]

On Sunday, 3 September 2017 19:10:25 UTC+1, Trevor Harley wrote:

I had lunch with John He's a weatherman Kettley a couple of years ago, and he was absolutely charming. And full of good weather stories too.

Doesn't surprise me at all, he always seemed down to earth. He's still doing stuff - I've heard him on TalkSport.

Richard 

[Jack Harrison]

I knew Graham Parker quite well and once I was really put to the test.

I used to give specialist forecasts for gliding including competitions (wearing my weatherjack hat).  Among my critical audience one day was Graham Parker.  He kindly said afterwards that I had given a decent briefing.  As luck would have it, my forecast for that day's competition flying turned out to be reasonably correct. 

But I was not always right.  I still recall with acute embarrassment the occasion when a 19-year old pilot asked about some cloud over the Midlands that didn't seem to be moving on the satellite sequence.  "Forget it Tom.  It's medium level and will soon break up."  It didn't thin much during the day and Tom had been spot on when he suspected wave-induced medium cloud: it reduced the strength of the sunshine and damped down the thermals in addition to areas where the wave had an effect.  I had a red face that evening - and it wasn't from sunburn.

However, quite extraordinarily, a few weeks later I was forecasting at a different gliding competition and an almost identical situation occurred.  Having learnt from the earlier mistake, much to my amazement, I got it right that time.

Jack

[Tudor Hughes]

    Where's Bob Pritchard, the best of the lot.  He still contributes to COL.  Another good one was David Membery.

For "O" you could have " Oh bugger, it's Schaffernacker".

Tudor Hughes

[Tudor Hughes]

Michael fish was a pretty good forecaster but had an inflated view of himself, shall we say.  He tried to pull my bird, the arrogant sod. He failed.

Tudor Hughes

[John Hall]

An excellent list. You don't have to be that old to remember Trevor Baker, as he was forecasting on Southern ITV's regional news programme well into the 1980s IIRC, I think after he had retired from the Met Office. Trevor the Weather, they used to call him. One of my favourite forecasters.

I remember the occasion in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Computers were just starting to take over from humans in forecasting. One evening Trevor played down the chance of any significant snowfall the next day, saying precipitation would mostly be rain except perhaps on the tops of the Downs. He finished by saying that it was only fair to mention that the computer was forecasting a fair amount of snow. It turned out that the computer was right, and next day he was big enough to admit it. 

[xmetman]

[Len W]

There was Barbara Edwards, the first BBC female weather presenter.
Gave up apparently because she got too much criticism for her outfits.

People seem to like Carol Kirkwood's outfits.


Len