Ireland’s position in the Gulf Stream on the edge of the wild Atlantic makes weather forecasting a special challenge here.
Andrea Byrne of the RTE Guide sat down with Joanna Donnelly, Gerry Murphy and Nuala Carey recently to chat about all things weather! Speaking to the RTÉ personalities, Andrea spoke about career, family and of course the uncertain Irish climate.
Joanna Donnelly opens up about how she has enjoyed the role since beginning in February:
Great! I have been enjoying it so much, even the late nights. I’ve been getting some positive feedback online, so I’m happy that I’m doing it right and that people appreciate my style. RTÉ gave me a lot of training and feedback since the start and when I went from the late-night broadcasts to the six o clock news. I know Six One News is a different beast, so on the night I started, I started tweeting. Once you go live, people start looking for you online so I knew that if I was going to have a presence, I wanted it to be controlled by me.
When asked if the pressure of the job ever gets to her, Joanna says:
The pressure I put on myself is to do the best job I can every day and that is all I can do. I look at every bit of information diligently, but sometimes it goes wrong. On Tuesday, the rain came in quicker. It was supposed to come in the evening, but it came in the afternoon. And I thought ‘Bugger!’ that ruins my forecast, but you know, I did the best I could at the time.
Gerry Murphy shared the best and worst parts of his job, saying:
The variety, for a start: the scientific aspect with the forecasting and the challenging area of communication and working on TV. It’s a wonderful medium to work on. Also, working on TV gives me great opportunities to meet people, to do different things. So for example, I very much enjoyed doing the Tracks and Trails programme last year.
Night shifts are the hardest part. They are very tiring, they throw your body clock off and they’re hard to recover from.
Nuala Carey spoke to Andrea about how she kick started her career.
After college, I did a little bit of volunteering for the radio station Anna Livia, where I used to read the news and do traffic reports. I was in touch with AA Roadwatch all the time and then they mentioned a job was coming up there. I went for that and worked on Radio 1 and 2FM for them for just over a year. Then I saw an ad in the paper looking for weather presenters. I had a number of interviews and auditions and then they offered me the job. But you know, as a family we always had great respect for the weather. The news was never over until the weather was over in our house.
The lovely Nuala went on to reveal her career bucket list, saying:
I always wanted to present Winning Streak, which I did for one night. It’s a wonderful show and it’s a challenge for presenters. I’d like to present something that I like to watch. I love anything with Francis Brennan. Oh I know! The career goal…Francis Brennan’s Grand Tours, I have to get on that!
You can read Joanna, Gerry and Nuala's full interview in this week's RTÉ Guide.
