Day in the Life of a Jersey Meteorological Forecaster

• Rob Plumber explains his job at Jersey Met

Rob Plumber is just one of a 13 strong team at Jersey Met.

He works one of four shifts to provide a vital service that runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

Their coverage of the Channel Islands gives us the most accurate forecast available.

Here at ITV I have a brief every morning and afternoon from the forecaster on the desk who will explain, in detail, all the weather the Channel Islands will experience over the following five days.

The Channel Islands is a microclimate. The department and their experience in Jersey is crucial, but they also assist with Guernsey Met (and take their observations) and Alderney's forecasts, plus hand their observations back to the UK Met Office.

To have eyes and ears on the ground is paramount to providing the best forecast possible, and living on islands requires flexibility and understanding as to how the weather can change so quickly.

The department cater for, amongst others, the needs of aviation, shipping, farmers and construction - not to mention you and me!

The team are also responsible for handling the data and historical information that Jersey Met collect through the day, week and years. In fact, Jersey Met's historical data goes back to 1894.

They also deal with social media, and their own website which has day to day weather observations, including tide times and air pollutions.

Here at ITV, we take that hourly data (and their guidance on the phone) to produce the eight bulletins broadcast across the day - which also go on our website.

If you are interested in what a real full brief looks like - here is Matt Winter briefing Joe Wauby who has just arrived on shift at 12.30pm.

(This was not a mock up, but an actual briefing that took place earlier in March this year.)