Robert "Rob" McElwee (born 21 January 1961,

Burton upon Trent Burton upon Trent, also known as Burton-on-Trent or simply Burton, is a market town in the borough of East Staffordshire in the county of Staffordshire, England, close to the border with Derbyshire. At the 2021 United Kingdom census, 2021 censu ...

, Staffordshire) is a weather forecaster. He was BBC Weather's longest-serving weather forecaster since the departure of

Michael Fish Michael Fish (born 27 April 1944) is a British weather forecasting, weather forecaster. From 1974 to 2004, he was a television presenter for BBC Weather. Career Fish was born on 27 April 1944 in Eastbourne, Sussex. Educated at Osmington Sch ...

. He presented forecasts on

BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...

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BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. The station replaced the BBC Home Service on 30 September 1967 and broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasti ...

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BBC Radio 5 Live BBC Radio 5 Live is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It broadcasts mainly news, sport, Talk show, discussion, interviews and phone-ins, and is on air 24 hours a day. It is the principal BBC radio station Broadca ...

and

BBC One BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's oldest and flagship channel, and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television b ...

. He was also a regular weather presenter on the

BBC News at Ten ''BBC News at Ten'' (formerly known as the ''BBC Ten O'Clock News'' or the ''Ten O'Clock News'') is the BBC's flagship evening news programme on British television channels BBC One and the BBC News Channel, broadcast nightly at 10:00pm and pr ...

and the

BBC News at Six The ''BBC News at Six'' is the BBC's evening news programme on British television channels BBC One and BBC News (British TV channel), BBC News (UK feed), broadcast weeknights at 6:00pm and produced by BBC News. It is normally broadcast for 30 ...

, having previously forecast on the

BBC News at One The ''BBC News at One'' is the BBC's afternoon news programme on British television channels BBC One and the BBC News channel with British Sign Language Interpretation, broadcast weekdays at 1:00pm and produced by BBC News. The programme runs fo ...

. According to his

LinkedIn LinkedIn () is an American business and employment-oriented Social networking service, social network. It was launched on May 5, 2003 by Reid Hoffman and Eric Ly. Since December 2016, LinkedIn has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft. ...

page, since December 2014, McElwee is a senior weather presenter for

Al Jazeera Al Jazeera Media Network (AJMN; , ) is a private-media conglomerate headquartered in Wadi Al Sail, Doha, funded in part by the government of Qatar. The network's flagship channels include Al Jazeera Arabic and Al Jazeera English, which pro ...

Early life

He gained an HNC in maths, statistics and physics from Reading College of Technology (now

Reading College Reading College is a further education college based in Reading, Berkshire, England. It has over 8,500 local learners on over 900 courses. The Kings Road site that is the principal location of Reading College has been used for further education ...

Career

McElwee joined the

Met Office The Met Office, until November 2000 officially the Meteorological Office, is the United Kingdom's national weather and climate service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and ...

in 1982, working as a weather observer, spending most of the next eight years observing the weather on the Army Air Corps base at

Netheravon Netheravon is a village and Civil parishes in England, civil parish on the River Avon (Hampshire), River Avon and A345 road, about north of the town of Amesbury in Wiltshire, South West England. It is within Salisbury Plain. The village is on ...

Salisbury Plain Salisbury Plain is a chalk plateau in southern England covering . It is part of a system of chalk downlands throughout eastern and southern England formed by the rocks of the Chalk Group and largely lies within the county of Wiltshire, but st ...

. Following this, he trained as a forecaster and worked at airbases in

East Anglia East Anglia is an area of the East of England, often defined as including the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, with parts of Essex sometimes also included. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, ...

. He joined the BBC Weather Centre in May 1991, making his first appearance in July. He is a Fellow of the

Royal Meteorological Society The Royal Meteorological Society is an organization that promotes academic and public engagement in weather and climate science. Fellows of the Society must possess relevant qualifications, but Members can be lay enthusiasts. It publishes vari ...

. In 2009, he lived with his wife Rosanne MacMillan (previously a continuity announcer for BBC TV) and sons in Buckinghamshire. McElwee presented his final forecast on BBC One on 10 January 2011, during which he forecast rain with chances of snow for most of the UK. He ended the forecast saying, "'Till then, a bit of snow still. That's it from me. That's it from me, really. Goodnight." He was moved to backroom forecasting duties by the Met Office as part of a cost-cutting exercise.

References

External links

Rob McElwee Profile
at BBC Weather {{DEFAULTSORT:McElwee, Rob 1961 births BBC weather forecasters BBC World News Living people People from Burton upon Trent