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We went tere......... THE MET OFFICE, Exeter BY AMANDA BLOOMER ‘C


limate dictates our wardrobe; weather determines what we wear’ – such an obvious statement when you


think about it but do we really think about the weather? We grumble about it incessantly, that’s for certain, and it’s usually how we open conversations with strangers; we sit glued to TV weather charts, intelligently interpreting the isobars and isotherms or getting distracted by the weather presenter’s dress; we bask in it, batten down the hatches because of it, and yet – whatever the weather – life goes on. And, fairly or otherwise, it is invariably the ‘Met Office’ we blame if the weather isn’t as expected! Operating from their stunning purpose built £80M centre just off the M5 near Exeter to which the service moved in 2003, The Meteorological Office is the United Kingdom’s


national weather service. And it has come a very long way indeed from when it was first established in 1854 as a small department within the Board of Trade under Vice Admiral Robert FitzRoy as a service to mariners. It was the loss of the passenger vessel, the Royal Charter, with 459 lives off the coast at Anglesey during a violent storm in October 1859 that led to the first gale warning service and FitzRoy


went on to establish a network of 15 coastal stations from which visual gale warnings could be provided for ships at sea. Use of the new electric telegraph enabled


rapid dissemination of warnings which in turn led to the development of an observational network which could then be used to provide synoptic analysis. The Met Office gradually evolved into an


invaluable information source for everyone, mariners and landlubbers, when in 1861 it started to provide weather forecasts for newspapers. FitzRoy requested the daily traces from the


photo-barograph based at Kew Observatory, originally known as The King’s Observatory as it had been completed in 1769, in time for King George III’s observation of the transit of Venus on 3rd June that year. A barograph is a barometer that records the


barometric pressure over time in graphical form and is also used to make a continuous recording of atmospheric pressure. Francis Ronalds, the inaugural Honorary Director of the Kew Observatory who founded the Observatory’s enduring reputation, created the first successful barograph utilising photography in 1845 and similar barographs, as well as instruments continuously to record other meteorological parameters, were later provided to stations across the observing network. Publication of forecasts in newspapers


ceased in May 1866 after FitzRoy’s death but recommenced in April 1879 and


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