BBC Weather

BBC Weather is the department of the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) responsible for both the preparation and the broadcasting of weather forecasts. On 6 February 2018, BBC Weather changed supplier from the government Met Office to MeteoGroup after an open competition. The Met Office had been the provider of weather information for 94 years. The first BBC weather forecast was a shipping forecast, broadcast on the radio on behalf of the Met Office on 14 November 1922, and the first daily weather forecast was broadcast on 26 March 1923. In 1936, the BBC experimented with the world's first televised weather maps, brought into practice in 1949 after World War II. The map filled the entire screen, with an off-screen announcer reading the next day's weather. On 11 January 1954, the first in-vision weather forecast was broadcast, presented by George Cowling. In an in-vision the narrator stands in front of the map. At that point, the maps were drawn by hand in the London Weather Centre, before being couriered across London. The forecasts were presented by the same person who had composed them, and had relatively low accuracy. The London Weather Centre which opened in 1959 took the responsibility for the national radio weather broadcasts. Radio forecasters were chosen by a BBC audition from the forecasters at the London Weather Centre. In 1962, the installation of a fax machine and an electronic computer in the Met Office led to more accurate and quicker forecasting. Satellite photography was available from 1964, but was of a poor quality and was given on paper, with the coastline etched in felt-tip pen. This did not change until 1973 with the installation of a new computer, increasing processing power of the Weather Centre greatly, leading to forecasts twice as accurate as earlier ones. As computational capability improved, so did graphics technology. Early hand-drawn maps gave way to magnetic symbols, which in turn gave way to bluescreen (CSO) technology, each of which allowed the presenter greater control over the information displayed.