This is taken from the Daily Telegraph:

George Cowling
Published: 6:38PM GMT 27 Dec 2009

George Cowling, who died on Christmas Eve aged 89, secured his place in history on January 11 1954, when he ventured before the BBC cameras to become the nation's first on-screen weatherman.

Our island obsession with weather has meant that his successors – whether long of meteorological experience or short of skirt – have become a part of the fabric of British life: always noticed, occasionally vilified, once even the subject of a pop record.

For Cowling however, there was no such gimmickry. Instead his bulletins were basic in the extreme.
 
From 1949, the BBC had carried weather maps at the end of the evening's programmes, during which an off-screen announcer read a script supplied by the Meteorological Office. The introduction of an on-screen forecaster, suggested at a BBC executive lunch in 1953 attended by Director General Sir Ian Jacob, was a big step for both organisations.

Studio facilities and technology available to the forecasters were extremely primitive and provided little in comparison to the vast quantities of instantly-accessible data churned out by today's hi-tech instruments, many of them in orbit above the Earth.

In Cowling's pre-space age, forecasters occupied a cramped corner of an announcer's studio at BBC Lime Grove, producing "graphics" comprised of two hand-drawn weather charts fixed to an easel with drawing pins. To add to the charts during a broadcast, the forecaster was equipped with a squeaky charcoal pencil.

In the early-1950s television programmes began at 8pm, and the new weather feature was tacked on to beginning of the schedule. Part of the brief was to look back at the previous day's forecast, assess how accurate it had been, and, if necessary, to try to explain what had gone wrong (or, in the description in the Radio Times: "Explain and comment on the charts shown... stress the continuity of the reports provided... show how the weather expected tomorrow is conditioned by the weather experienced today".)

Thus Cowling and his colleagues began to talk at 7.55pm, and had four-and-a-half minutes to fill before the continuity announcer took over to introduce the evening's entertainment. While the viewer might have considered the slot brief, more than four minutes represented a real challenge for an inexperienced broadcaster to fill fluently without a script. Cowling himself noted later that to fill the time "unprompted, before critical millions, could only spell one thing: unhappiness".

Indeed, critics gave Cowling mixed reviews. He once even appeared to generate his own weather pattern. Caught in a storm on his way to work his sopping-wet clothes began to steam under the studio lights until Cowling was invisible in the fug.

Quickly however, a sense of comforting familiarity was established. On his first broadcast, Cowling noted that the windy weather would make it a good day to hang out the laundry to dry.

George Cowling was born on March 2 1920, the son of a compositor on a newspaper in Leeds. He joined the Met office, then part of the Ministry of Defence, aged 19, and worked through the war as a weather forecaster for the RAF, stationed initially in Yorkshire, and then on the Continent.

After 15 years with the Met, he was transferred to the London Weather Centre where he coped successfully with the exacting requirements of his new television job before promotion took him, in February 1957, to RAF Bomber Command. Subsequent postings included Singapore, Malta, Bahrain and Germany. He also taught at the Met Office College and was principal forecaster at Heathrow.

After a 40-year career in the Met Office, Cowling joined a private-sector forecasting firm, where he provided sound and valued advice to less-experienced colleagues.

George Cowling remained active long into retirement and enjoyed bridge and chess. He also enjoyed a weekly round of golf with two other television weather forecasters, Jack Scott and Bert Foord, both of whom pre-deceased him.