Evelyn Cusack has announced that she is retiring from Met Eireann after 42 years of service.
Evelyn is a well-known face to many Irish viewers as she has presented weather bulletins on RTE for 30 years, and she became the head of Met Eireann in March 2018. She has confirmed that today will be her last day in the role.
Evelyn studied Maths and Physics in UCD, and after graduating from university she landed a job with Met Eireann in 1981. Evelyn made her first ever appearance on RTE doing the weather forecast in 1988, and remained on the channel for 30 years.
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She has reflected on her career which memorably included weather events such as Hurricane Ophelia in 2017, followed up by Storm Emma and the Beast from the East. Evelyn told RTE how at the start of her career there were no satellites or internet to help forecasters in predicting the weather.
She said: "We used to get charts on electrostatic paper, and it would take half an hour for a few charts to come in." Evelyn was promoted to Head of Forecasting in 2017, and she remembered a very busy first year in the position with the arrival of Storm Ophelia and the Beast from the East.
Evelyn referred to that time as her “annus horribilis of weather”, using the famous phrase Queen Elizabeth II included in her 1992 speech following a challenging year for the British royal family. In 2017, Ireland was hit by two major storms, Storm Ophelia which was later followed months later by Storm Emma.
The entire country was then shut down after heavy snowfall arrived which was brought on by the Beast from the East. Evelyn recalled how she had to call to recommend cancelling the National Ploughing Championships. "It seemed like an enormous thing to do. I mean, I closed it down.
"Obviously you don’t want anyone hurt or houses knocked down, but you want your forecast to be right and to be able to give enough notice that people can take action.”
Evelyn remembers the weather being very calm that morning, before the winds whipped up and tent structures were "flattened" by the fierce winds. As she retires today, Met Eireann is launching a new element to its weather app giving ten day forecasts for mountain areas, and Evelyn is positive that AI could be a valuable tool for assisting weather forecasters.
She told RTE that she is excited to see Met Eireann get involved in the "next weather revolution" of Artificial Intelligence (AI), with the national forecaster putting in a professorship in a university. Meanwhile, social media users including Evelyn's RTE colleagues have flocked to Twitter to wish Evelyn well in her retirement.
RTE journalist Ciaran Mullooly wrote: "A fabulous professional and a great lady to work with. - especially when we were all in ‘catastrophe’ mode on @rtenews! Enjoy your retirement Evelyn & looking forward to seeing you more back in the midland heartlands from now on."
A second person said: "A well earned retirement!" A third added: "Have lovely retirement Evelyn - you will be missed!"
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