Met Techs Course at Shinfield Park c. 1980 [an ex-RAF HQ near Reading]

Mercury Barometer Servicing lesson.

Teacher: "Bloggs, what the bloody hell are you scrabbling around on the floor for?"

Bloggs "all the little ball-bearings have fallen out and are all over the place!"

NB. In these H&S awareness days,
1. mercury baro. not used and
2. if they were, incredible precautions would be taken.

Difficult to legislate against an outbreak of Bloggs, though.

If I may nominate a dark blue met man it would be Jimmy James at RNAS Culdrose back in the 70's. Always interesting and often hilarious met briefs which led to Helzepheron lunches.

Aaaaaah, Shinditz.

The European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) was next door. It was known as Early Closing Monday Wednesday Friday.

Joe 'Purple', the Met man at RAAF East (home of CFS, SAN and SATC)….in the early '80s. The surname merely reflected the colour of his jackets and ties - and he had quite the collection.

Joe 'Purple' was still at East Sale in 1986. Another classic was Lance C at 1FTS. Lance used have his 'jokes within lecture' embedded in his notes - guaranteed to occur at exactly the same point for each course.

As ever it's the French who set the standard.


Video: French weathergirl stuns viewers with nude report - Telegraph

Now recovering slowly from Met. reunion at Queen's Head Sleaford, 12 attended. Best dining pub in Lincolnshire. One broken ankle. Three unpublishable poems. One presentation champagne, one ditto whisky.
Thanks to David Taylor for organising, and the weather Gods for a sunny day.
Quote of the day: "he was a ****, but I can't remember his name!"

OK with that in mind I'll make a forecast for 12 persons for 3rd Dec with a 99 per cent chance of being right.

Windy and rough, vis poor, foggy becoming better.

Tiny was the RAF MetO during the last 543 Sqn detachment to Lima in 1974 monitoring the French nuclear tests in the Pacific. His high-level (FL490-ish) forecasts 2000nm away from land were usually accurate to within 5kts and 10 degrees. He was a consummate professional, and a delightful man to be with.

Would this be Tiny Mentz?

He became OC Mobile Met Unit as I recall.

Not at all Tiny!

Have sent you a PM

Well done Fly3!

I was wondering how long it would take for Jimmy James to get a mention.
One looked forward to his briefings and as I recall he was a leading light of Rent-A-Mob, but that's another story:O

ps Fond memories of the old Fly3 on Ark!!!!!

Well for me it has to be the two Hollies and the lovely Viv at Cranwell....

Always cheered my gloomy day up regardless of the weather!!

Small Welsh met man at Cranwell in late 60s-early 70s. Excellent chap, very dry humour, but sadly cannot remember his name. Whilst teaching Ground School and explaining Buys Ballot's Law, said "I always remember this by the simple way - If you stand in Piccadilly Circus with your back towards the statue of Eros, looking up Regent Street, then Austin Reed is on your left". Ever since then I've had no trouble remembering either the law or the direction.

I'd like to say a big "THANK YOU" to Trevor "The Wevver" Calvert at Brize in the '80s - the best met man I ever met. I remember battling in to Ops one snowy morning for an early departure (Deci or Dulles or some such) to find Trevor practically skipping around the office with delight. When we said "what have you got to be happy about, you lot didn't forecast this?" he proudly exclaimed "I did and I'm the only person in the country who got it right. I told Bracknell they were wrong and they told me to sod off". He was right more often than not and he was a decent chap to join for a pint in the mess bar .

As for accuracy, I once heard John Kettley say that the most accurate way to forecast is to say "tomorrow will be the same as today - you're more likely to be right than trying to do it properly".

Trevor was called TC or TopCat when he taught at the Met Office College, renowned for giving some Saudi students [my father is a prince. I am having problems revising. Would you like a Mercedes?] a hard time.

In my turn, I left a bunch of them in London because they were late reporting to the 2300 depart coach back to the billet near Reading.

Complaints via Embassy to Met Office, to College Principal and .............

.......... LB on carpet, standing, no coffee. Asked to explain.

"I was instructed to impart the British Met Office ethos inter alia. One essential is timeliness"

Case dismissed.

Good to see Bill McQueen mentioned. Excellent service to the C130 airbridge at Port Stanley. His forecast of a Z shaped jet stream gave us a 9hr 40mins record for a Herc PSA to ASI, 2/3 Sep82. Average time around 11 hours.
1066

No idea of their names, but the met men at Palermo were real comedians. For a start they were at a disadvantage being in the only office in the ATC tower with no windows and they would swear blind that there was no rain today, even though you were standing in front of the dripping wet. Their enthusiasm for the notion that all things in Sicily were good filtered through to the approach controllers. One of our rules was that we had to have radar monitoring. But Palermo ATC frequently had other ideas and would reply to a request for radar vectoring with, "Itsa nisa day. Radar, ees switched off".

Re #86 - France's answer to the burkini furore!

I met Peter Jackson last year at a Bawtry Met. reunion: we were together for years at Finningley. I think he drove a sports car "with room in the back for a lawnmower". Name escapes me but I believe it had a fibreglass body. He was one a very few forecasters who attended the RN Lieutenants' Course at Greenwich. I remember because his absence caused me a fair number of extra duties.

The McQueen folklore includes being sent back Home from Ascension [as a S/Ldr RAFR Met] when the Falklands were kicking off by the notorious Captain McQueen RN "we don't need you lot".

But they certainly did.

Yes, a Scimitar!

And do I see Roger Boast? ......... I am getting bad with names I fear.

PJ occupied the prestige post as SMetO Cranwell after, I believe, Jim Lawson, or possibly John Tucker.

You may know some of my annual contacts: David Richardson, David Taylor [ex CMetO STC], Brian Wharton, Tony Armstrong, Tom Besford et al.

One day I well tell PJ's tale of an uproarious naughty night duty at Heathrow.

Beg to report another reunion at Queen's Head Sleaford.

Dave Richardson unable to attend. Otherwise Dave Taylor ex-CMetO STC, ex-Shawbury, ex-Detmold, ex-Marham was in the chair, surrounded by Barbara Tweed, Maureen Phillips, Brian Wharton , ex- everywhere including RAFG, Tony Armstrong ex-MMU and Coltishall, and a supporting cast of several .
The pub took it all in good part, as ever.

Tony Armstrong's medals have been mounted at last "but I am not sure where the Air Efficiency medal has got to". As there are ten others, who cares?

Great company, and reminders of wonderful times serving the RAF, who were sometimes grateful and always sceptical.
"When I am right, no-one remembers, when I am wrong, no-one forgets".

Funny the things you remember, but I'm sure Tony Graeme was on the EGVN roster as 'AFG' and Frank Callanan as 'CFC'... that is correct isn't it?

I'm sorry but I don't know. Met folk were as peripatetic as service people, averaging about a mosting every three years with detachments in between.

"Where my caravan has rested" is a long long list!

I remember Jan's (and she was lovely) forecast well. I was writing the 240 OCU's entry to the station mag at the time, and did a spoof drama story about it. I think she forgave me.....

In a previous life on 543 Sqn at Wyton, Ken Cook the station commander asked our Polish met man at morning briefing if there might be any snow that day. "Group Captain, I can assure you that there will be no snow at Wyton today." was the response. We walked out of stn ops into a veritable blizzard!

John Tucker more than once did a massed briefing to student pilots at Cranwell on dense foggy mornings. They were all expecting to remain grounded at least until the infamous 10Z, when John woke them up by saying "I know of a place not half a mile from here, where the sun is shining and visibility is unlimited". After a pause to allow brains to stir, he pointed upwards.
On other occasions he would set them on calculating how many million tonnes a CB cloud weighs. - 3caster

Jan 1974; just left RAF and arrived in Jersey for some BEA Viscount training.
Little 'one ring' Bas knocked on Met office door and entered. Opened mouth to speak to be met with:
"I AM CARRYING OUT A BRIEFING!"
Bas: "Oh, sorry, I thought you were just having a chat."
Exit Bas to reddening glow from metman's face. :p

"When briefing a senior officer [understood to be Sqn Ldr or above] put down pipe or cigarette".

Wg Cdrs and above were usually sufficient to bring Cloudy to his feet, albeit in a hunched, nicotine stained, and dishevelled state.

My prize briefings:

Douglas Bader
Sir Malcolm Campbell
Mickey Martin

and ACM Stacey's chopper pilot, who I told to "sod off, sunshine, you can't queue jump just because you forgot to book on the mayfly".
C Met O had me on the mat for that but he had trouble keeping a straight face. There is quite a lot of background to that episode.

I think any Met Official who can sucessfully project the weather 24hrs in advance is infamous, - as there certainly aint many of them.

Would that be the same Charles Ripley who was known as Cunim Jim at a Nav School (Gaydon I think) in 1968-1970. I showed him a photograph of unusual cloud formation in Kenya and he proceeded to give me both barrels on the finer points of climate in Kenya. His teaching did come in useful when I became a truckie.

Early morning met at Finningley for the low level Dominie push. Weather terrible apparently although BBC seemed to think it would be OK-Confirmed by the 0700 actuals so we gave the aircraft to our medium level friends and retired to the feeder.
0900- Back at the office desk and call from S Met O; " was it you that decided to scrub the LL wave?- is there any chance of resurrecting it?" "Not really, why."
" She gave you yesterday's actuals"

Seen on Facebook - Several people with meteorological knowledge have advised that the atmospheric phenomena captured here are: a circumzenithal arc, a supralateral arc, an upper tangent arc (relatively rare), a 46 degree halo (pretty rare), a Parry arc, Parry supralateral arcs, a 22 degree halo, twin sun dogs (parhelia), partial parhelic circle, and an upper sun pillar. I also understand it is rare to see all of these during a single event. I hope you enjoy the picture! Taken in Eastern Manitoba, Canada..

https://scontent-lht6-1.xx.fbcdn.net...68&oe=5ABCBE5A

Was that SMetO the excellent "Mac" Cameron? My super boss for five years, six daughters I think, and then a boy, much to everyone's relief. For no very good reason he had almost as many lawnmowers as offspring.
[Come to think of it, so have I, but the ratio is 4:3]

Ricardian ............ oh! oh! ..........Wow!

Very very rarely do the weather gods allow such a coming together, and even more rare to have a decent camera handy. And a foreground to match.

Many thanks.

[no Green Flash, mind you .................]

Early one morning, just as the sun was rising, into the met office at Cambridge Airport, (the one at Hobart , Tasmania) , there stomped the CFI of the newly formed Aero Club of Southern Tasmania, Lloyd Jones, till not long before , an instructor at No9 EFTS Western Junction, in the State's north.

Lloyd and the met man , Sam, disliked each other's GUTZ , to put it mildly. Lloyd, with pipe clenched between his teeth, stood by Sam's desk, feeling in his pocket for his matches. He lit his briar, then casually tossed the match into the nearby metal waste paper basket, igniting the scrunched up paper therein. A furious Sam leapt up from his chair, went to stamp the fire out, but his shoe jammed in the now blazing basket, and was about to set his strides on fire. Swearing loudly, Sam danced around the room trying desperately to shake the basket free.

What did the very cool Lloyd do? He lent over Sam's consol and pressed the big red knob, setting off loud sirens and alerting the airport fire crew. A fire extinguisher was mounted on the wall of the met office, so Lloyd took hold of it and used it for its designed purpose.

Needless to say, from that day on, any duff weather forecast by Sam, Lloyd ignored. And went flying anyway.

It seems Met Men attract waste paper troubles.
We had a fastidious Polish gent at FY who, in nis quest for neatness, trod the paper in the WPB right into the metal bin when he arrived to take over.

So PJ empied the bin, filled it with cold water, floated a raft of paper on it, and waited for KS to arrive.
As did several others ...............

"I suppose you think that bloody funny?!"

Yes.

The met man with six daughters was indeed well known when I was there as a student (72-73) but the story is from when I was there as an instructor after his time I think.

Timelord: thank you, that fits perfectly because in Mac's time there were no young ladies in the office. I think he was succeeded by a Yorkshireman, Roy Walters?

More's the pity about the girls, of course.

Re GBZ's post #50 & Bert Marsden @ CATC, Hurn.
We knew him as "Turbulent Eddy". I recall his frequent disparaging remarks about radio/tv reports mentioning 'black ice'. "There ain't no such animal !" :-)

Lyneham Liz's finest hour
 

Liz was in STS at Lyneham, forecasting at the Main Brief for an ABEX onto Otterburn, incorporating the usual parallel streams of Para/Para Wedge aircraft and Stores aircraft, probably about 21 in total. She warned the Brigadier (ABF Cdr) that before sunset the wind would be too strong for Para, and soon after dusk frontal ****e would come through, = chose your P Hour very carefully. The streams briefed and mounted, and sure enough on the run-in the wind was reported by the DZSO as miraculously reducing to within limits. As the last Para ac finished its second pass over the DZ (to get rid of those too slow to get out on the first pass) a solid wall of brown ****e rolled over the DZ, but all ac were by then drop complete. A forecaster's finest hour!

Can't believe no-one's mentioned Mogadon from Shawbury, late 70s / early 80's?