A long time ago, I fell in love with Rob McElwee. Not for his suave good looks, you understand. Nor really for his (substantial) meteorological skill and accuracy, although he is undoubtedly one of the best forecasters we have. In fact, it took me a while to figure out exactly why his broadcasts pressed my buttons. When I did, I was saddened that nobody seemed to have sung his praises adequately on the web (at least as far as I can find), so resolved to create this page to explain.
I could mention his smart, stylish appearance, or his authoritative yet smooth and laid back manner. But that, to me, is secondary. More important is that Rob McElwee presents the weather in a positive light. It is something to be marvelled at, to get excited about. His enthusiasm for his subject is as infectious as that of the venerable Johnny Ball (though his presentational style couldn't be more different!)
Rob avoids many of the cliches that other presenters overuse, but in particular he refuses to submit to the lazy thinking of sunny good, rainy bad. The band Half Man Half Biscuit summed up this attitude perfectly with the line "Opinionated Weather Forecasters telling me it's going to be a miserable day... I quite like a bit of drizzle, so stick to the facts." When Rob McElwee is presenting it, the weather isn't "miserable" or "bad". It's interesting...
A Rob McElwee forecast frequently contains nuggets of real meaty meteorology. He doesn't just tell us what the weather is like now, but why it's like that, and he does it without being patronising or condescending.
If the weather isn't doing anything particularly interesting in the UK, he'll take us off to some other part of the world. Sometimes he'll do this anyway, just to tell us something about a kind of weather we don't normally get here. In case you want to know more, he's probably told you what this meteorological feature is actually called, so you can look it up.
Asked why he wanted to be a weather forecaster, Rob replies "I wanted to interest people in the weather". It shows, and he does.
Rob is the only current TV forecaster (that I'm aware of) who routinely gives us more, far more, than the bare minimum UK forecast. This is a sad state of affairs, and it only looks like getting worse.
Rob McElwee Biography and FAQ (BBC)
Forum thread about Rob at T.W.O
Rob appears in the lyrics of a song by Colin Beveridge:
On a mountainside in Forfarshire
The clouds gather over the terrain
You put a hand on my shoulder
We weren't expecting rain
You're not Heather
I'm not Rob McElwee
But we can shelter each other
And babe that's more than good enough for me.