As the weather man faced the recent flood and storm disasters, he had only his gorgeous wife Rose and their unborn child on his mind.
You might say it’s been a hectic few months for weather presenter Steve Jacobs. The floods that devastated Brisbane, the sodden “inland sea” of rain-soaked Victoria, the devastation of Cyclone Yasi – this weary-eyed weather presenter has seen it all.
The 44-year-old found himself slap-bang in the middle of the developing disasters as he covered the events for Today. He witnessed scenes better suited to a horror film than a day at work delivering bubbly weather forecasts, but while the destruction was devastating, he says the experience was also uplifting.
“It’s certainly been a huge few weeks,” Steve says on a rare morning at home in Sydney’s east. “Cyclone Yasi was just frightening. We were in Innisfail on the Wednesday morning, before the cyclone hit in the afternoon. And the whole time, the main thing I kept thinking was, ‘We’ve just got to get out of here; we’ve got to get north’.”
This desire to seek higher ground saw Steve and his small crew – including a cameraman and a producer – up-stumps to Cairns, where they weathered the worst of the cyclone from a local hotel.
His reason for retreat was obvious. Steve knew that while the weather raged around him, back home he had two very special people waiting for his safe return – his pregnant wife Rose Kelly and their unborn baby. “The whole time I kept thinking, ‘I’ve got a baby I want to get home to’,” he recalls.
