Bert Foord

Bert Foord moved to Loosley Hill, Loosley Row in 1988.

Hallmark January 1994. Clem Browns Meets Clem Bert Fooord

If you watched a January BBC programme about the weathermen you will have seen one of our local residents busy with his map – an earlyish example, as the style and the black and white production proclaimed. Now, well established at Loosley Hill, he is the subject of my latest "Profile".

Bert Foord is a fair way from his origins, for he was born in Carlisle and in early days lived in a Westmorland village. Shortly after the war years he moved to Prestwick on joining the Meteorological Office. It was the start of a long and interesting career. In fact, he was committed to the weather business until a few years ago.

In 1953, he commenced three years on weatherships. Our more mature readers may recall that there were corvettes bearing the names of flowers.

Bert married in 1954, at Carlisle, went on a new forecasting course and then came south to the RAF base at Hulavington, Wiltshire to look after forecasting requirements and give lectures on meteorology. In due course Bert went to Gloucester to work on data collection in south-west areas. Soon there was a weather centre in London; Bert sampled that but went to Manchester for a while to open a new centre.

Of course, there are many weather centres in a far-flung system, though the real centres of great expertise are at Bracknell, Berkshire and Washington D.C. Meanwhile Bert started as a radio weatherman for the BBC in 1961, first taking his talents to television in 1963.

I remarked to Bert that observations for forecasting were always biased towards the Northern Hemisphere, with a much lesser density in the south. He agreed but maintained that the Falklands conflict made a big change, with forecasting becoming worldwide. And as we all know, we have satellite pictures to reinforce other observations. He continued with television weather until 1974.

Bert's last big job was in 1990 when he worked at Strike Command, Walters Ash, in connection with the Gulf War, the post being a back-up for the Met H.Q. at Bracknell. Previously he had spent a while in the Maldive Islands and later was based in Germany. That brings our globe-trotting weatherman to 1984, back to U.K. and, in 1988, to Loosley Row. He retired four years ago.

He keeps in touch with the sort of developments that have engaged him for so many years, a key to this being his responsibility as a Trustee of the Institution of Professionals, Managers and Specialists (which used to be a Civil Service union). He has also given talks on weather topics.