I'm a TV weather presenter - I was in floods of tears when UK hit 40C for first time

She tells us if we are going to need our big coat, a brolly, or if we should slap on SPF 30 before we leave the house in the morning. Good Morning Britain weather presenter Laura Tobin is a familiar face to most Britons and, like most of her fellow countrymen, she just loves talking about the weather. “I have been forecasting the weather for 22 years and I want to share my passion for it and why understanding it has never mattered more,” she says. Talking about the weather is, of course, as much a part of the British national psyche as our stiff upper lip and self-deprecating humour. And no wonder as it shapes our lives, history and future – especially now with climate change causing more frequent heatwaves and heavy floods. Yet while nine in ten of us will have discussed the weather in the past six hours – no doubt commenting about the arrival of the autumn chill – how many of us truly understand it? Step forward meterologist Laura who has written new book Come Rain or Shine, which lifts the lid on the fascinating science behind the forecast. “While I do the weather every day on Good Morning Britain , some early risers may also know I have this one minute slot at 6.15am when I do a bite size science segment,” the 45-year-old explains. “It has proved to be hugely popular and is really where the idea from the book came from. I love explaining the science behind the weather and found people really did want an explanation.” While the book is partly autobiographical, it is packed with facts. Laura’s fellow presenter Kate Garraway says: “Every time I chat to Laura, I come away with another incredible weather fact that changes the way I look at the world around me.” In June Laura received the Royal Meteorological Society’s Michael Hunt award for communicating meteorology to a non-scientific audience. She has over 220,000 followers on social media and is one of the most recognised meterologists on television in the UK. Her weather obsession began aged 14 at Duston School in Northampton . Her geography teacher Mr Hannant explained the jet stream by getting all the boys in the class to line up in one straight line with the girls in another right next to them. The pupils were then told to run across the room as fast as they could while pushing firmly against each other from both sides. Laura writes: “After much clashing and giggling, we reached the other side of the classroom, no longer in straight lines but in one wiggly one. ‘Marvellous!’ he said.‘This is how the jet stream works!’ The boys represented the cold Arctic air pushing down from the north, the girls the warm air pushing up from the south. “From that day on, the jet stream was ingrained in my mind. It explained why our weather was so changeable. It made so much sense! After that lesson I sort of fell in love with the weather.” Laura went on to gain A-levels in mathematics, physics and art before graduating from the University of Reading with a degree in physics and meteorology. The university, the UK’s leading place to study meteorology, is also where she met her future husband Dean Brown, with whom she shares nine year old daughter Charlotte. “In my physics classes there were only four girls out of 70 but the meteorology classes were about 50/50. Thankfully things are changing,” says Laura. “It’s integral to know physics to be able to forecast the weather. You need to be able to model the atmosphere and understand how it moves.” But long before Laura graced our TV screens every morning, she was working hard in her field. After starting her career with the Met Office at the Cardiff Weather Centre, she moved to RAF Brize Norton where she provided aeronautical meteorology reports and briefings both to Royal Air Force transport crews and the British Forces Broadcasting Service. “They used to ask me really ridiculous questions,” she recalls. They used to try and catch me out because they wanted to see if I knew what I was talking about because I was a girl and I was young.”Forecasting the weather for pilots flying all round the world truly can be a matter of life and death. “When a storm was expected, we had to predict exactly when,where and how hard it would hit. You cannot refuel an aircraft when there are thunderstorms in the vicinity, as a lightning strike hitting fuel could cause a huge explosion,” she explains in her book. She recalls one incident where a crew were flying back from Cyprus with an urgent request because their plane’s anti-freezing system had failed and there was rapid ice build-up on critical parts of the engine. “The crew’s lives were in my hands. I checked their position and altitude, monitoring the banks of cloud along their route, constantly communicating and diverting them through cloud-free skies. I had to pull together all my training and experience to guide them back safely.” Forecasting under pressure in potentially life and death situations taught Laura “to think on my feet.” “It stood me in good stead in more recent years, particularly when working with people like Piers Morgan on live TV,” she laughs. “He would throw anything at you, and I was always braced fo completely unexpected questions.’ Laura, who has presented Countryfile and Radio 4’s Shipping Forecast, has broadcast across the UK from the summit of Ben Nevis to the gardens of Buckingham Palace. She’s even delivered broadcasts mid-air. “I remember walking past the planning team one day and hearing them say, ‘...and then Laura will abseil down the Spinnaker Tower’ . I stopped and asked, ‘Laura will what?’” The following week she found herself abseiling down the 170-metre-tall public attraction in her own real life Bridget Jones broadcasting moment. “I could hear Piers saying, ‘She’s not going very quickly, is she?’ If I hadn’t been so scared, I’d have got down quickly and given him what for.” Laura has also delivered reports across the world from the top of a mountain in Austria to a glacier in Svalbard, a remote Norwegian archipelago located in the Arctic Ocean about halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole.“Svalbard is my favourite place in the world, the landscape is breathtaking,” she says. “I spent three days making an Arctic documentary there on climate change.” As she dipped her fingers in a lake that was once a frozen mass she felt tears well. She heard tales from locals of starving polar bears and emaciated reindeer and admits, “It was the first time I had seen climate change at such close range.” When Laura talks of concerns about climate change it is the only time in our interview I see her naturally sunny disposition cloud over. “2026 has been the hottest summer on record in the UK,” she says. “We’ve had record after record broken. I thought what is happening now would be after my career had ended but it is 25 years earlier.” On July 19, 2022, the highest reading reached 40.3°C (104.5°F) at RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire. “That was an absolutely awful day for us meteorologists,” she recalls. “I was in floods of tears. I am in WhatsApp groups with weather experts all over the world and we are all devastated because the predictions for what would happen in 2050 are happening now.” Meanwhile this September was provisionally the joint fourth warmest on record for the UK, according to figures from the Met Office. And with warmer than average weather forecast for the rest of the year, we’re on track for 2026 to become one of the warmest years on record.Tobin believes in educating people about the science of climate change. “After Svalbard I decided that one of the most important things you can do to tackle climate change is talk about it. So that’s what I vowed to do,” she says. Come Rain or Shine is dedicated to her daughter Charlotte who she describes as “my little ray of sunshine". “She shines brighter every day,” smiles Laura. “Her fierce determination is more powerful than a hurricane,” she says proudly. No doubt a case of like mother like daughter. Come Rain or Shine by Laura Tobin (New River, £16.99) is out now