Navy veteran who forecasts weather in 1,000 places for cruises ensures bad weather doesn’t stop ‘the best holiday ever’

When embarking on the cruise of a lifetime, whether that’s in the sunny Mediterranean, the tranquil Caribbean, or far-flung destinations like South America or East Asia, there’s one thing no traveller wants to get in the way: bad weather.

Not only can hitting a storm at sea make the voyage uncomfortable, it can also be very dangerous, replacing joyful holiday memories with seasickness or worse.

So, who are the people who work tirelessly behind the scenes, monitoring all manner of high-tech equipment to ensure that cruise passengers can enjoy their dream trip? For MSC Cruises, one of the world’s largest cruise brands, which takes travellers across the globe, the man behind the weather forecasting is Royal Navy veteran Paul Mitchell.

Put simply, Paul, 56, said his job is about making sure a “bad weather forecast” doesn’t “become a holiday memory”. From his base in Stockley Park, near London, Paul and the Maritime Support Centre team use a range of top-spec equipment to predict and track weather patterns across the globe, keeping in close contact with the captains of MSC Cruises’ 23 ships wherever they are in the world to ensure their voyage is as smooth as possible.

Indeed, as he told PA Real Life: “Smooth sailing doesn’t happen accidentally.”

Paul, who is the head of meteorology at MSC Cruises, has “always had an interest” in and a “passion” for weather.

Growing up in Portugal, he used to love seeing huge storms come in over the sea, “rushing down to the beach” to see “the massive waves crashing” – “there’s nothing like it,” he said.

Upon leaving school, he decided he wanted to make weather his full-time job. He dreamt of becoming an operational forecaster – someone who predicts and monitors the weather to provide accurate forecasting – but soon learned there were two main paths ahead of him in that field: Join the UK Met Office, and likely be based on-shore in the UK, or “join the Navy and see the world, type thing”.

Paul opted to join the Royal Navy, signing up in 1988 for a Naval career that would span almost 35 years.

He started out as a meteorological observer, collecting and presenting data and looking after instrumentation for the forecasters. Then, he became an assistant forecaster and was pushed up the career ladder before becoming a meteorologist and oceanographer, making him a Royal Naval Officer.

“I was an aviation meteorologist specialising in jets as well as helicopters,” Paul said of the bulk of his time in the Royal Navy.

“It took me on various operations. I saw action in the Gulf War, I was in Sierra Leone, I was in Bosnia, and also spent a little bit of time in Afghanistan, as well, as a forecaster there in Camp Bastion.”

“I also obviously spent a lot of that time at sea – over a decade, when you add it up, I was on the water,” he added.

“So that’s basically what gave me the global meteorologist capability.”

When MSC Cruises came calling, he felt it was “a perfect fit”, as he could “bring that global experience to the team here”, using the skills he’d honed over decades to ensure the safe sailing of dozens of cruise liners across the world.

“What I’m trying to do is make sure that my job is not about a bad weather forecast that becomes a holiday memory,” he said.

For Paul and the Maritime Support Centre team, the most important thing is safety: Looking ahead and seeing how the cruises are going to be affected by weather, and advising on necessary changes to prevent weather from interfering with passenger experience.

It’s a vital behind-the-scenes operation that passengers don’t “know anything about”, he explained, adding that he enjoys working in this “fairly silent way”, keeping “everything nice and smooth” and making sure that “our customers get the best holiday” possible.

Monitoring the weather and oceanography for MSC Cruises is a 24/7 operation, 365 days a year. Paul and his team work with cruise captains across the world, using high-resolution modelling for forecasting from their base near London, with global weather stations providing data to guide them.

Ships are constantly monitored with satellite communications, while cameras visually track what’s going on in ports and at sea as MSC Cruises’ ships set sail for destinations including Asia, South Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean, Europe, and the Middle East.

Cruise captains also feed back on their own visual observations, helping Paul and his team decide when routes need to be adapted, even for seemingly small mid-ocean adjustments.

“Every day is different; every day is a busy day, particularly through the winter months,” Paul said.

“The last few weeks, for example, we’ve had bad weather in the Far East, bad weather in the States, South America and in the Mediterranean.”

Paul is also championing a new technology, spearheading a project currently being implemented across Italy which uses AI to help monitor and predict weather patterns in ports, giving captains a better idea of how they might expect weather to look in hours’ or days’ time.

Across Italy, live weather stations are being established across MSC Cruises’ most visited ports. Two are currently operational – one in Rome, and one in Genoa – but the plan is to take the technology global.

“If you’re a captain coming into a port – say we were coming into Rome – the captain, two hours away from the port, can see exactly what the wind is doing in the port from the live weather station there,” Paul explained.

“But the great thing is, once he is alongside, he can then see, from the trend from the AI system, what the wind is going to be like when he leaves the following morning.

“So far, the feedback we’re getting and what we’re seeing is about 30% more accurate than a normal forecast. So it’s really game-changing for the captains.”

By the end of 2026, MSC Cruises will implement an additional four stations across Italy – “but in the end, we’d like to cover the Mediterranean and go global with that system as well”, Paul said.

After his rich and varied career in the Royal Navy, Paul loves using his skills in meteorology and oceanography for the passengers of MSC Cruises.

For him, it’s all about giving people “the best holiday we can, ever”.

To find out more about MSC Cruises, visit www.msccruises.co.uk.