Storm Doris: What it’s like when the weather’s the story

As the UK’s first named storm of 2017 took its toll last Thursday, Storm Doris led the news bulletins and the BBC Weather experts were in high demand. We asked four key members of the BBC Weather Centre team what tracking and reporting Doris had entailed:

Carol Kirkwood, BBC Breakfast weather presenter (above)

As early as Monday it looked like Thursday was going to be an interesting day with a deep area of low pressure crossing us. That low pressure was named ‘Storm Doris’ on Tuesday just before 11:00.

I’d been presenting from the roof of New Broadcasting House that morning and I remember describing the likely conditions on Thursday as “atrocious”. My colleague on BBC Breakfast picked up on that: “You don’t often hear Carol using that word,” he warned.

The following day, broadcasting from Kensington Palace, I mentioned atrocious conditions again, adding detail about wind speeds, snowfall and heavy rain. The aim is to make the message as clear as possible, using words that catch the audience’s attention.

At the time of day I broadcast I’m aware that our audience may be getting children ready for school or in the middle of making breakfast, so they may be only half-listening to me - hence the choice of language is very important.

Weather is our business so it is understandably exciting for us when we see storms developing. But of course we need to keep at the front of our minds the destruction they can cause.

Also, does anyone actually know what a gust of wind at 70mph means? That is when I think it is more beneficial to say, for example, that trees will be uprooted, debris will be flying, or that it will be difficult for high-sided vehicles.

On Thursday (23 February) the adrenalin in the Weather Centre was palpable. On the day of a storm almost every BBC platform wants to chat to you and if possible have you on their show. The phone was ringing off the hook.

Early in the day a squall line crossing the UK produced heavy rain and wind gusts. This confused a few people who thought that Doris had arrived - so again we had to explain that her wrath was yet to be felt. 

When my broadcasting shift ended we had just had a gust of wind at 94mph in Capel Curig. Off duty, I followed the storm’s progress throughout the day.

Jacob Cope, Met Office forecaster

I had just had a few days off work but, with Doris making the news, I read up on the forecast the night before my shift. I was due to start at 07:30 that Thursday and my cycle to work was windy with strong gusts - it was obvious that something significant was coming.

I spent the first couple of hours getting to grips with the forecast in detail and updating the producer and presenters on significant events as they happened - be it large gust totals, heavy falling snow or the snow starting to pile up.

At 09:00 I went to the news meeting and briefed the team about the current situation. There was a sense in the room that Storm Doris hadn’t really materialised after that earlier squall line had failed to do much damage. I reassured everyone that much more was to come.

I spent much of the rest of the day monitoring the storm, liaising with the Met Office chief forecaster in Exeter, and making sure national and regional presenters were kept up to speed. The regional BBC teams are a great help in these situations because they pass information of disruption in their region to me and I can pass it to Exeter to verify how well the forecast is going.

I was amazed by how widespread the gales were across Wales and England, with gusts of 62mph in London.

As I approached the end of my shift it was time to start looking back on what happened, taking stock, and finally having a rest as the winds eased. At 19:30 I handed over to the night shift and got ready to cycle home in what by this time had become a fairly pleasant evening with light winds - the calm after the storm.

Commuting by bike always reminds me of the importance of weather forecasts, and it’s a good feeling to see them play out as accurately as this one. 

Sabitha Prasher, BBC Weather producer

As a producer in the Weather Centre there is never a quiet moment and when the weather becomes the lead news story it feels like you’re spinning a lot of plates at once.

The run-up to the big event can be one of our busiest times as colleagues in BBC News start to plan how they’ll cover the story, to provide the audience with the best offering possible. Preparing for Doris was certainly like that.

Part of our job was to liaise with different parts of the BBC, all of whom wanted to know what the impacts would be so they could arrange broadcast crews to be in the right place at the right time.

We also played a big part in creating graphics for TV, fact-checking, managing social media platforms, including Twitter and Weather Watchers, and keeping our regional presenters up to date.

By Thursday morning it was evident that Doris was having a big impact, and there were moving pictures and stills to prove it. Throughout the morning I dealt with a host of different requests from TV, radio and online to include a weather presenter as part of their coverage - often live. Events can unfold rapidly during these fast-moving weather situations. You have to work hard to stay across it all.

John Hammond, BBC Weather presenter (above)

By the time I arrived on shift around 9:00, squally winds and heavy rain had swept across England and Wales, bringing down trees and disrupting transport into London. The lull that followed prompted friends to message me, asking “Was that it?” Not at all…it was a precursor to the main event.

The core of Doris’s winds crossed the country over the following few hours. By the time I went on-air to present the forecast at the end of the BBC One O’Clock News impacts were widespread and the storm was top of the headlines.

BBC Weather Watchers did us proud by sending us up-to-date images, which we showed on TV and online, including in a Facebook Live which I presented during the peak of the storm. Our audience wanted to know how Doris was likely to affect them specifically and where it was heading.

By evening, as the storm subsided, it was time to look back. As with all extreme weather days it was a privilege to be at the centre of things, but working in the Weather Centre all day you can feel isolated from the reality of the weather outside. I was reminded as I trudged to the station. Tired after a busy shift, I found my train delayed due to fallen trees.

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