John Kettley's Extreme Weather

The hit song "John Kettley is a Weatherman", which twenty-one years ago reached number 21 in the UK Singles Chart, confirmed John's status as a cult figure. After fifteen years achieving fame as a BBC national forecaster, he joined the commercial company British Weather Services and continues to provide forecasts to many sporting concerns that include the Football Association, Twickenham and leading racecourses such as Cheltenham, Haydock Park and Newmarket. In this book, he looks back on many varieties of extreme weather ranging from the atrocious winter of 1963 through to massive floods and scorching summers. His personal involvement with the 1987 hurricane fiasco features extensively. Weaved into the overall theme are John's memorable encounters with such noted personalities as Dick Francis, Dickie Bird and Alistair Campbell. It all adds up to a compelling read, ending with John's views on climate change. These emphatically make the point that the harsh winter of 2008/09, whichtook almost everyone by surprise, was a blip and not a reversal of trends that he regards as alarming in the extreme.