Those little clicky sticks concealed in the left hand have spoiled the nation’s weather forecasters. Oh, for those pre-1985 days when Bill Giles began the forecast with a little clutch of magnetized clouds, stuck a few over Scotland and removed others from just south of Daventry, before walking – yes, actually getting in some exercise – over to tomorrow’s map for further symbolic sleight of hand. Yes, sometimes they wouldn’t stick or they fell off or the word ‘GOF’ appeared over the Isle of Wight, but not that often. And there was always the delightfully weird sense that the whole thing was being done on the door of a gigantic fridge.
Magnetic Weather Maps on the BBC
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opaltotem
August 11, 2009 at 8:26 am
The 1974 weather symbols were designed by a student at the Norwich School of Art, Mark Allen.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/bbcweather/features/weathersymbolsandgraphics.shtml
http://www.mikeafford.com/tv-graphics/projects/bbc-weather-symbols.html
johnnyboy
September 20, 2009 at 11:03 am
Of course there was the infamous hilarity of the BBC forecaster talking about some weather thing (as they invariably did) when the magnetic “F” in the word “fog” fell off the board mid-broadcast and the forecaster, without a second thought said, “Sorry about that f in fog”.
Must be on You Tube, surely?
paulus
May 30, 2010 at 3:06 pm
simpler solutions for simpler times.
Richard Davies
August 9, 2010 at 10:43 pm
Also seem were the blurry pictures with a schools science programme style yellow pencil .