Michael Fish should pour himself a stiff drink. His beaming yellow suns and sheep-shaped clouds will disappear from BBC screens for good on Monday morning. Britain itself is transformed into a three-dimensional brown strip. Ominous shadows sweep over the nation, representing cloud cover. Rain drops increase their intensity in the biggest shake-up since George Cowling delivered the first television forecast in 1954. The sun is no longer yellow and circular. Its arrival is represented by a brightening of the brown earth, eventually baking to a red ochre during a heatwave.

Those familiar wavy lines representing warm fronts and isobars have gone the way of magnetic clouds. “It’s not a geography lesson, it’s a weather forecast,” said Colin Tregear, Project Director of the BBC Weather Centre. “Most people just want to know, ‘What’s my weather going to be like?’”

The weather forecast has been enlisted in the broadcasters’ ratings battle and audience research convinced the BBC that it was time for a change.

Mr Tregear said: “Viewers said they trusted our accuracy but found presentation staid and old-fashioned.”

The BBC has invested £1 million in Weatherscape XT, a New Zealand-created software programme which uses virtual reality technology to take real-time data and translate it into three-dimensional images.

Radar pictures are received every 15 minutes and rainfall figures each hour by the Met Office in Exeter, allowing more regular live forecasts. Many of the forecasts on BBC News 24 are repeats. Mr Tregear said: “Now we can sweep under the clouds and track what is happening directly above your head. It can be localised to show a town or dive over Old Trafford for the big match.”

There will be a more consistent weather picture with the same data and graphics used across the BBC’s regional, satellite channels and website services.

When the weather is mixed, current forecasts rely on one symbol showing a raindrop and sun emerging from a white cloud. The symbol covers 12km and a seven-hour period. Thunder will now rumble and snow is to look like the real thing.

Helen Willetts will introduce the first forecast using the new technology on BBC One from 6am on Monday.

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