Sometimes you need a weather forecast to save the washing. Sometimes you need one to save the world.
Eighty years ago, the Allied armies first landed on the beaches of Normandy, France, to begin liberating the occupied countries of Western Europe from Nazi Germany’s rule. A team of six weather forecasters was assembled to provide the Allied commanders with the best information for the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944. They had none of the technology of today – satellite imagery, computer modelling – just weather observations and an innate feeling and experience of how the weather would develop.
Leading them was Group Captain James Stagg, a by-all-accounts dour Royal Air Force officer. Among the six was a Kiwi: Royal Navy meteorologist Lawrence Hogben, an Aucklander who was on a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford when
