Jörg Kachelmann (b. 15 July 1958 in Lörrach) is a Swiss Presenter, Journalist and Entrepreneur in the Meteorological field.

[edit] Biography

Jörg Kachelmann spent his youth in Schaffhausen. His childhood ambition was to become a meteorologist and record the weather.

During his school and university holidays he worked for various weather services.

He studied Geography, Mathematics and Physics, at the University of Zürich where Meteorology was not offered. He dropped out of the university before being awarded his degree and became a free-lance contributor to a Swiss newspaper, the Sonntagsblick. In between he also worked for Schaffhausen local radio station Radio Munot. From there he moved to the Scientific Editorship of Swiss Television SRG and in 1988 he became Deputy Editor in Chief of Schweizer Illustrierte.

For a long time he had faxed unsolicited weather forecasts to Südwestfunk. Eventually these were adopted. In 1989, Jörg Kachelmann bought an old farmhouse in Bächli and rebuilt this into a high tech weather station. In 1991 he founded the Meteomedia AG weather service based in over 1000 weather stations in Germany alone.

In 1996 Kachelmann became Programme Director of the German edition of the American television Weather Channel, however after barely two years, the station discontinued the service citing "lack of viewer interest."

Apart from producing weather forecasts for ARD and various other broadcasters Kachelmann acted in other areas. In 1996 he presented the German programme "Vorsicht Blöff", appeared from 1999 to 2004 on the talk show "Riverboat", to which he returned in 2007. Since 1998 he has presented the quiz show "One will win".

In April 2002 ARD changed its weather service provider from the German Weather Service, DWD, to Meteomedia AG. Since then he has presented the weather alternating with Claudia Kleinert, Sven Plöger and Alexander Lehmann before the main news. Kachelmann has become famous for his unconventional presentation of the weather. A common fallacy is that he introduced words such "Blumenkohlwolken" ("Cauliflower clouds" for Cumulus) and "schlürfende Winde" (slurping wind). He denied this in a German newspaper interview[1]. In January 2009 he became an Internet phenomenon after a cat joined him on set while he was presenting the weather.^[1][2]

The headquarters of the Swiss Meteomedia AG is located in Gais AR near to St. Gallen, the headquarters of German Meteomedia GmbH is in Bochum. In 2004 Meteomedia founded the Weather Information on Demand (WIND) system in Austria. He has been criticised for his commercial exploitation of the media and describing himself as a "meteorologist" without holding a recognised qualification.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Meteomedia AG
• Article (in German) on the dispute between DWD and Kachelmann
• "Das Klima ist verrückter als das Wetter": Kachelmann interviewed by Tagesspiegel (in German)
• Kachelmann's Live TV Weather forecast with a cat in studio