Behind the weather – with VK3EN

At this month’s meeting at Woodend we were honoured to have a presentation from popular ABC TV weather presenter, Paul Higgins, VK3EN.

Paul took us on a journey through the history of weather prediction in Australia.

The technology used to predict the weather and portray it graphically has changed dramatically over the time Paul has been involved. Starting with simple maps with velcro’d temperature in the days of standard definition TVs through to the era of computer graphics with the presenter keyed in over a green (or blue) screen. Next were an array of flat screens where the text had to be carefully arranged to try to avoid crossing the black lines. Finally we reached the era of the wall-sized LED screen.

Some in the audience thought that Higgins had the best job in the world, swanning in at 7:20pm to read the report from the Bureau. The work involved was described in detail.

Paul also talked a bit about his ham radio journey, starting as a teenager accidentally picking up VK3AML’s AM transmissions on a broadcast band receiver.