Sara Thornton - BBC Look North

Sara Thornton's keen interest in weather started when she grew up living next door to the local weatherman in the United States, and from practising tornado drills at her junior high school.

After moving back to England, a passion for writing led her to an English degree, a postgraduate degree in broadcast journalism and into the newsrooms of the BBC.

But after several years as a radio and television newsreader at BBC East and ITV Anglia, a close encounter with a group of tornadoes on a trip back to the US reignited her enthusiasm for all things weather.

After repeated requests her persistence paid off and she was eventually sent for meteorology training. She became Anglia's weather presenter in 2002.

Since then Sara, her husband and their two small children have lived in Brussels and Washington DC, and Sara has worked as weather presenter at BBC Look North based in Newcastle and BBC South Today.

She now presents the weather for BBC South Today, BBC Oxford TV and BBC Radio Oxford, Berkshire and Solent and has established a Twitter feed for the South Today region @BBCSouthWeather.

Sara says she can talk about weather for hours on end and it's her husband who suffers the most from this obsession - not least because of her inability to walk out of the house without checking the latest radar picture.