He’s Ireland’s most popular weatherman, with an army of fans tuning in to the forecaster with the boyish good looks.
RTE’s Gerry Murphy has quietly become something of a sex symbol of TV weather – although the modest Monaghan man would laugh off the notion.
Even Miriam O’Callaghan, in an interview with him on her Saturday night show, referenced his appeal.
She said her taxi driver told her his daughter is always asking if “that fella Gerry” is single.
Google his name and the most popular search is: “Is Gerry Murphy married?”
Turns out there’s good news for his armchair admirers – Gerry is single.
He told the Irish Mirror: “I am still single. I do get letters – they ask about the weather. Not many, but it’s nice to get them.”
But he has no answers to why he still looks so youthful despite having worked with Met Eireann for almost 30 years.
He says: “I don’t know, I have good genes – my family tends to keep their hair and hair colour, and I eat healthy and
stay fit.
“I go running and cycling and to the gym. Obviously you want to present yourself as well as possible without going over the top. But no, I don’t do Botox”, he laughs.
Gerry also sticks to a healthy diet. He says: “I’m doing shift work, so usually have a late breakfast of boiled eggs and porridge and only an apple and banana until my dinner – meat and veg, with yoghurt after.”
So who is Gerry Murphy? Where is he from and how did he get into weather forecasting on the national broadcaster?
And when he was growing up did he forecast his future career?
He says: “I’m from a small farm near Carrickmacross in Co Monaghan, so my dad and uncles were very interested in the weather.
“In school, I had a very good science teacher – Michael Fahy – and I liked it and did science in UCD. When I graduated I saw an ad in the Irish Times – Met Eireann were recruiting for a scientist with a degree in maths and physics and thankfully I was successful.”
His first posting was a year later in 1993 in Cahirciveen, Co Kerry, before moving to Dublin in 1999 where the opportunity to do forecasting, and then reporting, came up.
So, does he like being on TV?
He replies: “It adds another dimension, going from the scientific to the communication. It’s a very nice responsibility to be relaying the message to the Irish public. With TV there’s more scope as you have the graphics. I find it fulfilling, in severe weather especially, I try to offer reassurance”.
We asked him what he thought was behind his popularity in the job? Has he ever been tempted to sign off with a wink, like former colleague Gerald Fleming?
Gerry answers: “No, when I started Gerald was doing it [the winking] and I wasn’t going to copy his thing! I try to be pleasant. I try to be myself and end on a nice note.”
As a nation, we’re obsessed with the weather and Gerry says this is down to our strong farming sector.
Also – he points out – we are lucky to have a mild maritime climate, which means our weather is changeable and “never boring”.
And he fondly recalls some of the better summers we have had over the years. He notes 2018 and 2013 were the best recently, though his favourite was 1995.
He says: “From May to the end of July in 2018, it was really warm and dry. The hottest was 32 degrees in Shannon and all the mean temperatures were above the long term average – with 140% of the sunshine we usually get.
“For me, the most memorable was 1995, I was working for Met Eireann in Co Kerry – that was a fabulous summer.”
We asked was there any chance of a bit of that this summer – or even this Bank Holiday weekend?
If you’re looking forward to wheeling our the barbeque, today is good, and Monday should be too, according to the meteorologist.
He adds: “The weather will be quite good on Saturday ; mainly dry with a few showers in the South. However, it looks like rain will spread north on Sunday.
“Monday, it’s sunny and some showers. Temperatures from 15C in the east and around 19C and 20C in the West”.
And the summer? How far does the crystal ball extend?
Gerry says: “It’s difficult to say beyond the shorter term, you can forecast the weather with reasonable accuracy up to ten days ahead, after that it’s uncertain.
“We have a monthly forecast.. but this is not a forecast per se, it’s an indication”.
So, which apps are best to rely on for weather forecasts?
He advises the most accurate app for Ireland is the Met Eireann one as they use a model which allows short-term calculations on much smaller areas, while the generic ones, like weather.com and AccuWeather, use an American forecasting model.
He explains: “The Norwegian met service app uses the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting and we also use this information for forecasts beyond 48 hours and for up to two days ahead.
“The Met Eireann app uses a model called HARMONIE which gives a higher resolution. It breaks down the weather into 2.5km cube sizes on the map, compared to 9km on the ECMWF. So the city centre may have different rain forecasts to, say, near Dublin airport”.
As for the long-term future Gerry says climate predictions for the next 30-40 years envisage warmer, drier summers, especially in the East, resulting not so much as an increase in our maximum but in our minimum temperature, with milder and wetter winters.
He adds: “Overall winds may decrease slightly because the planet is warming up with more energy in the system but when weather events do occur, they will be more severe, the intensity of storms will increase.”
Our unpredictable weather keeps us on our toes – but viewers can always count on Gerry’s friendly reporting of it. Even when it’s bad news, he delivers it nicely.
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