Meet Dorset's self-made weatherman

Shaun Lovett is not what many imagine when they hear about an internet weather forecaster.

The 24 year old property manager has never trained in meteorology and didn't even have much interest in the weather growing up.

But, like many of us Shaun takes a keen interest in when it is and is not snowing in Dorset. He says he just likes being sent videos of when it's snowing.

That love of snowy scenes viewed vicariously over the internet led him to set up Dorset Snow on Twitter, an account that now has snowballed to 6,623 followers. He keeps them all expertly up to date on the weather in Dorset.

If you're ever lucky enough to be invited to be part of a 6-person pub gathering with him, Shaun would probably forgive you for not assuming he knows so much about the weather. Even during conversations about the weather he tries to stay lowkey. In fact, it's often friends who introduce him as 'the Dorset Snow guy'.

"I know everyone likes a bit of small talk about the weather, but I don't like to self-promote but I don't want to throw it in people faces that I know a lot about the weather."

He says his usual response to polite British weather-chat is 'Yeah, it's sunny today, isn't it?'

After creating his twitter page at the age of 18, Shaun didn't see much growth. He says he had around 500 followers. It wasn't until 2018 that things really kicked off.

"When it really blew up was the Beast from the East.

"I think I put a tweet out there about 2 weeks before a snow event saying 'guys, there's a good potential for it to snow on this day.'

"That tweet ended up getting retraced and it actually did end up snowing on that day.

He says what was essentially a lucky well-educated guess turned into a number of shocked followers.

He gained over 1,500 followers overnight.

"Ever since then I feel like I've got a responsibility now with the amount of followers I have, not only to general forecasting, but to learn a lot more myself.

"I don't want to just be know as 'it was just a lucky guess or prediction'. I want to do it more often."

He's now got 6,623 followers on Twitter and has just launched a website for weather updates and alerts.

He explained how he learned so much:

"Over the years I followed more and more weather accounts, started looking into it, researching and started teaching myself. I don't have any qualifications. It's all self-taught. I've spent a lot of time over the last year especially with not a lot going on with my businesses, learning as much as I can, not just about the snow but all weather forms, the climate, clouds, all the stuff I thought was really boring a few years ago, now I'm obsessed with it.

"I guess you could say it was a hobby at first, it's more of an obsession now."