Kernow Weather Team (KWT) is a band of volunteer weather enthusiasts who provide regular social media weather updates for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly throughout the day, 365 days a year. We got them to tell us a bit about themselves.

Kernow Weather Team is a very small group of local weather enthusiasts, who decided that forecasting in Cornwall and on the Isles of Scilly wasn’t covered well by the media. So, we took it upon ourselves to create our own forecasts using local knowledge and data charts that are readily available. At the time, we didn’t have a clue that it would become a huge success with over 47k followers on FaceBook. We eventually joined other social media sites in order to get the information out on all platforms. We are also grateful to Isles of Scilly Flowers who are out sponsors. Toot when you see our car out on the road!

We provide a friendly, knowledgeable, voluntary service on a daily basis, which includes forecasts, warnings, tides times and radar updates, as well as important world weather news, weather informational posts and local travel. We are relied upon by many local radio outlets, local and international television news channels, emergency services including HM Coastguard and other rescue organisations. Our media sites are available on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.

Our large global following attracts an audience from a variety of different countries that appreciates seeing news from their own part of the world.

We are unique in what we do and value our followers

Our aim is to reply to every single comment although this has become difficult in recent months, due to being voluntary although we are hoping to obtain funding so that we can sustain ourselves as a business. We will always provide a caring and friendly outlook and help our followers as much as we can, bringing comfort for those who are affected for various reasons, especially with the weather becoming more extreme.

Our posts reach of well over 1.8 million, particularly during bad weather or important global news features. Our website reached just under 1 million over the last 12 months.

Who’s Who?

Dave, who became a fully qualified meteorologist, gaining his degree during lockdown. Dave brings you the main forecast, outlooks, warnings and provides daily world weather reports, behind the scenes comes with discussions and collaborations regarding making KWT a successful business using the knowledge and involvement of satellite and space organisations. Dave is the person who communicates with the media with a recent interview with BBC Spolight, and even Sky news during the snow event. We also have our own, regularly calibrated, weather station based here in Illogan which provides live information on our website and occassionally during weather events, we make that live on Facebook which is updated on a regular basis.

Penny, who concentrates managing the Facebook page and admin team. Provides a daily forecast for Newquay radio, a daily evening update and provides ongoing, live radar updates. She aims ensure the team are available on a daily basis, so the page is well cover, unfortunately this is a difficult task.

Hannah attempts to keep us all motivated. She works hard behind the scenes, communicating with potential funders or investors and related organisations. She also runs our other social media sites with some cover from Dave and takes an educated guess when editing our posts.

Amie helps with comments and can cover forecasts and other areas of the page when required.

Jane is our wonderful Isles of Scilly member, joining us within the 1st year of us running.  She writes a comprehensive forecast and brings you any news and updates from the wonderful islands, along with travel for the islands and and publishes some interesting weather information.

We have other team members who respond to comments, they are Claire, Tracey, Clare, and Shaun although they are not always available. We are all volunteers and thoroughly enjoy our work in between our daily, family lives, 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.

Yes, by 24/7 I mean we barely stop, during peak weather events we make sure the page is covered overnight.

KWT monitoring equipment – explained by Hannah

The data receiver gives us all the information currently being read by our weather station including UV and Solar energy. This is situated on the side of our house rather high up.

The next is the actual software through our PC.

This became national news and one of our followers sent us a hard copy of a newspaper that reported on it. You can imagine we were very busy after that. However, it did break that actual weather station but luckily our followers requested we set up a go fund me campaign to replace it, which we did and now have a much better, more equipped and detailed weather station.

The image below shows what the Beast from the East looked like in 2018. The precipitation image was taken from Netweather showing lots of pink which is snow. The green is a mixture of rain, sleet and snow. This was the first storm the team monitored and got them up and running as weather watchers. By the time the storm was over they had already gained 7000 followers.

Our future is promising, although extremely hard work, as we continue our social media sites and seek to be a financially viable business. KWT will always be here for our community, we see it as our baby, something with nurtured and has become a huge part of our lives and now our communities lives. We are incredibly exited at the future prospects for KWT, as our many new exciting ideas, become a real life dream.