TV WEATHERMAN Richard Angwin has swapped Wiltshire’s sunshine and showers for cyclones and floods after joining a 24-hour world news channel.

The 52-year-old, of Wanborough, who presented the weather on BBC Points West from 2000 until last week, has jetted off to Qatar’s capital, Doha, to work at Al Jazeera English.

As part of a team of four meteorologists, he will forecast, report on and explain some of the most extreme weather across the world for audiences in Asia, Europe and the Americas.

“I think it’s really a chance to push my weather or meteorological and broadcasting skills to the limit,” he said.

“It’s very different from just covering the West Country, covering local events, to try to encompass the whole globe and the main weather stories across the globe.

“When Al Jazeera approached me, it was a chance to deal with weather on a much bigger scale. So at the moment, there’s a cyclone developing in the Bay of Bengal, there’s serious flooding in parts of China and the Midwest of the USA.

“If you are interested in regional stories, you have also got to take an interest in the wider global stories – the two are interlinked – so it’s a chance to challenge myself really, test my skills a bit.

“And I have always quite fancied living abroad, just for a period of time. I don’t want to stay here forever but I have a sense of adventure and so does my wife.”

Richard, who moved to Upper Wanborough nearly seven years ago, started his career in 1979 at the Met Office, based at Lyneham.

He then presented the weather for the local BBC radio stations across the west, including Wiltshire, for about 20 years. He was later chosen to also present on Points West, making him a local celebrity.

Richard arrived in Doha on Monday and his wife Renu, 46, a consultant paediatrician at Great Western Hospital, will move over at the end of the month to take up a post at a private hospital.

He claims he was approached by Al Jazeera English because the channel is seeking meteorologists rather than just TV presenters.

He said: “They don’t want weather presenters, they want meteorologists. They are very interested in weather stories, they are very interested in environmental stories.

“When you are dealing with world weather and you are talking about more and more floods, there’s always a question of whether it’s linked to things like climate change.

“And they are trying to expand environmental stories so they wanted experts and meteorologists to be able to comment on such issues.”