BBC Weather Women: The Faces Who Turned a 1974 Experiment Into Britain’s Most Familiar Forecast

Carol Kirkwood announced her final BBC forecast on Wednesday, 1 April 2026. The presenter walked away after 28 years on the programme, and her fans on Twitter described the segment as ‘perfect’, while many viewers rushed to find the weather women on the BBC today – not to mention how the role came to look the way it does. Kirkwood’s story begins long before, with a Met Office forecaster who was “slaughtered” for her choice of attire. It has spanned a select few presenters who became part of a country’s morning and evening rituals. Here is who they are, what has been said for certain about them, and what has changed.

Quick Biography: BBC

Detail	Information
Full Name	British Broadcasting Corporation
Founded	18 October 1922
Headquarters	Broadcasting House, London, England
Founder	John Reith was the BBC’s first general manager
Known For	Television, radio, BBC News, weather forecasts, documentaries and entertainment

BBC Weather Women: Quick Biography, Age, Birthplace and Career

Name	Date of Birth	Birthplace	Profession / Known For
Carol Kirkwood	29 May 1962	Morar, Inverness-shire, Scotland	Former BBC Breakfast weather presenter; retired in 2026
Sarah Keith-Lucas	12 February 1982	Hastings, East Sussex, England	BBC weather presenter and meteorologist
Elizabeth Rizzini	Not reliably confirmed	Not confirmed	Met Office-trained weather presenter; known for BBC national and regional forecasts
Louise Lear	Not reliably confirmed	Sheffield, England	BBC weather presenter and meteorologist
Susan Powell	Not reliably confirmed	Not confirmed	BBC weather presenter, including regional and national broadcasts
Helen Willetts	Not reliably confirmed	Not confirmed	BBC weather presenter and meteorologist
Nina Ridge	Not reliably confirmed	Not confirmed	BBC weather presenter and meteorologist
Lucy Martin	Not reliably confirmed	Not confirmed	BBC weather presenter, known for regional and national forecasts
Elizabeth Austen	19 November, year not confirmed	Bexley, England	BBC weather presenter and environmental journalist
Alina Jenkins	Not reliably confirmed	Not confirmed	BBC weather presenter and broadcaster
Jennifer Bartram	Not reliably confirmed	Not confirmed	BBC weather presenter, including regional forecasts
Sabrina Lee	Not reliably confirmed	Not confirmed	BBC weather presenter
Mel Coles	Not reliably confirmed	Not confirmed	BBC weather presenter and broadcaster

The woman who went first

Prior to Kirkwood, Lear and colleagues on the current team, there was Barbara Edwards. She joined the Met Office in 1957, was doing pieces to camera for BBC radio in 1970, and was the first woman to be a TV weather presenter – beginning the role in January 1974.

She made a quick appearance on the TV screen. She departed the BBC TV team in June 1978 because she disliked being constantly attacked for her choice of clothing when her male colleagues were not. She resumed her radio forecasting, and there’s just something about it that still rings true when you read what some weather presenters are called online.

Her legacy lives on in British broadcasting. She was one of the faces on the 2024 weather-forecasting stamp collection and has been regularly named amongst the women who changed public attitudes towards women in the meteorological world.

Carol Kirkwood: 28 years, one very early alarm

Kirkwood’s route to the BBC weather desk wasn’t a straight line. She studied commerce at Napier in Edinburgh, then joined the BBC’s secretarial reserve in London in 1984. In 1996 she moved to the UK arm of The Weather Channel. When it closed, she trained at the Met Office under the BBC’s guidance, then joined BBC News as a weather presenter in April 1998.

She was presenting on BBC Breakfast by October 2000, initially sharing the role with Isobel Lang and Helen Willetts. In 2010, she moved to become the programme’s flagship weather presenter, appearing at the tennis at Wimbledon, the Chelsea Flower Show and Royal Ascot. She won the TRIC Award for best TV weather presenter in 2003 and several years subsequently.

The hours were cruel. She has revealed her alarm went off at 2.45 am for the Breakfast shift. She revealed she was leaving during the show on 27 January 2026. She said she wanted to spend more time with her husband and travelling. BBC Breakfast’s Meteorologist Matt Taylor to replace her.

The BBC weather women still on the team

A warning about the names. Presenter lineups are not permanent and printed lists often cannot keep up with changes. Others still showed Kirkwood among the top presenters despite being retired. Have a read through all the line-up appearances and rely on the official BBC announcements for the latest news. Many national team women have long careers.

Louise Lear

Her route was far from straightforward. She took a degree in music and drama from Middlesex University, was a weather presenter for Central Television from 1992, then spent two years at LBC before moving to the UK Weather Channel in 1996, before joining the BBC in April 1998. She is a regular on the BBC News at Six. Her career went viral in 2016 after she giggled through a live forecast – and viewers loved it.

Sarah Keith-Lucas

A Hastings native born in 1982, she took a geography degree at Durham University before entering the Met Office in 2007. A year later, she was already presenting forecasts for the BBC. Her screen work covers the five-day outlook on Countryfile as well as the climate-minded programmes Climate Check and Weather World. Outside the studio: she became a Celebrity Mastermind champion in March 2023 with Labyrinth as her chosen specialist subject. Her most recent TV appearance was presenting Heatwaves: The New Normal? On BBC News in June 2025 and BBC Two last month.

Elizabeth Rizzini

Her broadcasting story begins at the Met Office, where she started work in 2008 or 2009. She made her TV debut on BBC South East Today in November 2010. It took her a further nine years to reach the national TV screens, beginning with a forecast on BBC News at Six at the end of December 2019. She then reached the late-evening audience by presenting BBC News at Ten from late October 2023. A talent agency profile adds that she speaks Spanish and Italian. Much of the biography content online about her personal life comes from low-quality sites, so it’s best ignored.

The national team also includes Susan Powell, Helen Willetts, Alina Jenkins, Lucy Martin, Katerina Christodoulou and Alexis Green. If you’re looking for one particular face, official BBC announcements are the safest way to confirm who is currently on air.

More than someone standing in front of a map

It’s easy to underrate the work. Look at the careers above, and you find a pattern: Met Office training, years of regional bulletins, then national slots. Kirkwood, Keith-Lucas and Rizzini all went through the Met Office route before reaching the main bulletins.

The job also goes beyond the three-minute window. Indeed, the forecasters are responsible for live outside broadcasts, squeeze into radio and online forecasts, and now are at the helm of climate documentaries that are longer in length. That last point matters for anyone wondering where the BBC weather women are heading. Keith-Lucas’s heatwave film suggests that explaining climate impacts, not only tomorrow’s rain, is becoming part of the role.

Why interest in BBC weather women spiked in 2026

Of course, it’s probably the Kirkwood announcement. When you’ve been used to waking up to a presenter for years, and suddenly they’ve gone, the first thing you think of is “who else is there, who else is next?” And her leaving marks the end of an era; she was one of the longest-standing faces of Breakfast weather in recent memory.

All we can be sure of is: Kirkwood has gone, Taylor has been announced as her replacement on Breakfast, and all of the other women mentioned above are still on the BBC national team. As for the rest: beware anything claiming to know what promotions are coming, who is going next, or what they are earning. That information is not public.

The short version

With four years on TV for Barbara Edwards and 28 for Carol Kirkwood, the BBC weather women have defined how Britain is told the weather. The current crew features experienced broadcasters such as Louise Lear and fresh national presenters including Elizabeth Rizzini. Sarah Keith-Lucas is the weather presenter who reports on both the weather forecast and climate change. The faces may evolve, but the job remains: don’t keep everyone waiting and go before we’ve got out of bed.

What to watch next

If you are hoping to keep an eye on the BBC weather women in the next year or so, then watch out for two things: how the Breakfast show finds its feet without Kirkwood – that’s the change of that presentation desk is what viewers want to see most – and whether or not longer climate and weather shows, like the climate and weather shows that Keith-Lucas has hosted, start to occupy a larger part of the team’s output.

Neither is assured, and the BBC has so far said nothing beyond what has already been written here. But fifty years on from when Barbara Edwards first stepped in front of a television map, women presenting weather forecasts no longer turn heads. Instead, the women telling us what the day has in store are the trusted ones.

Celeb Writes