GOWER: Swansea Sound weatherman John ‘The Weather’ Powell dies aged 92

For generations of Swansea Sound listeners, the day started with the same cheerful voice: John Powell, reading the forecast from his cottage on Gower.

Mr Powell, known across the airwaves simply as John The Weather, died peacefully at the Old Vicarage Nursing Home in Sketty on Sunday 26 July. He was 92.

The Swansea Sound Memories Facebook page, which announced his death, said he provided “the go to weather forecast” for countless listeners for almost 35 years until his retirement in 2009, broadcasting from what he called the Gower Weather Centre.

Swansea Sound itself is no longer on the air. Launched in September 1974 as the first commercial radio station in Wales, and among the first in the UK, the much-loved station was absorbed into Bauer Media’s Greatest Hits Radio brand in 2020, and its old sister station The Wave has since lost its last locally made show.

The Gower Weather Centre was the studio he built at his Penmaen cottage, where he lived for 50 years, and which his family say he renovated himself with the help of a couple of friends.

Every morning, before most of Swansea was awake, he was in the garden taking daily readings from what his family describe as “a galaxy of meteorological equipment”.

John Sidney Powell was born in January 1934 and grew up in Petts Wood, Kent, the son of Bert, from a Welsh family, and Lily, who was English.

Both his parents had died by the time he completed his National Service in the RAF. In 1956, two aunts who kept a grocer’s shop on St Helen’s Road invited him to Swansea, and his family say he was glad to return to his Welsh roots.

After a short spell in the shop he joined the GPO as a telephonist, pursuing meteorology as a hobby that grew into a life’s work.

He became a respected authority on the weather, particularly in Wales, and a sought-after speaker, with contacts across local organisations and Swansea University.

His contribution to meteorological studies was recognised with an MBE, and in 2024 the Royal Meteorological Society made him a special award.

Away from the forecasts, his family say his great enthusiasms were the history of Pembrokeshire, where his Powell ancestors came from, and Daimler motor cars, which he first drove at the age of 19.

After retiring he lived in West Cross for 15 years before moving to the nursing home in Sketty.

His family’s tribute says it is “most of all as a friend, and a much-loved cousin in both Wales and England” that he will live on in the memory: entertaining company, a man who loved making jokes on live radio, and who welcomed hundreds of visitors to his cottage over the years.

“His wonderful smile, his distinctive voice and his sunny disposition will long be remembered by those of us who knew him,” the tribute says, “and by many others who only recognised him as John The Weather.”