Looking forward to a tough winter

Has been fascinated with the weather for more than five decades. Here the 69-year-old from Elham talks about the Great Freeze of 1963, his interest in snow and weatherman Michael Fish

Where did you grow up? I was born at Islington Maternity, which was destroyed by German bombs two days after I was discharged. I was raised in Bridge and lived there for the best part of 40 years, but I really do consider myself a Canterburian. For years on a Sunday evening, my father and I would walk from Bridge to attend evensong at the Cathedral. I went to St Christopher’s School in New Dover Road and then to a school called St Ninian’s, which is now the Ebury Hotel, and then to public school at Dover College. Where did you work? I was a chartered surveyor and trained in St George’s Street, Canterbury, before working for Wimpey. In 1980, I also started a farm shop in Barham. When did you become interested in studying the weather? In the mid-1950s because my father’s elder brother was an amateur meteorologist registered with the Met Office and had an interest in thunderstorms. I found his hobby extremely interesting, but my real fascination was with the winter months and particularly snow. I like to forecast and am able to say when it is going to snow to within 10 minutes. People always talk about it because it is always changing. I’ve always said that Britain has the world’s worst weather, but the best climate. than the alcohol-filled one. The Met Office did want somebody in Canterbury to become a semiprofessional meteorologist and I applied, but it went to another chap. That made me quite sad as they would have given me professional equipment. How has studying the weather changed in 50 years? The tendency now is to use electronic instruments. I have four which can record minimum and maximum temperatures to within a 10th of a degree. The modern Are the days of mild winters and damp summers gone? I don’t think we necessarily have seen the back of them. In my lifetime, I’ve noticed that the weather works in cycles – there’s no question of that at all. We did have mild winters, but we are now going through phases of hot and cold. The weather is very topsyturvy and we don’t always have the proper seasons that we used to have. Do you believe global warming is a credible theory? Based on my observations, I don’t put any value on global warming whatsoever. In the 1960s people were walking around talking about another Ice Age and that never happened.

‘I don’t put any value on global warming. In the 1960s people were talking about an Ice Age’

What instruments did you use when you first started? They were very basic, but I always used a mercury thermometer because it was more accurate Do you have a favourite weatherman? It’s Michael Fish and he is somebody I’m in contact with and who I’ve spoken to on the telephone about the weather. I feel a bit sorry for him because of that forecast just before the Great Storm in 1987. I believe he was treated very unfairly. How accurately can meteorologists really forecast the weather? The Met Office will forecast 30 days ahead, but it is very precarious. Even with the modern equipment, you can’t really forecast accurately for more than five days ahead. But that’s why weather is so interesting and it’s the extremes that really make it so interesting. There is great excitement when you see weather records broken.