After 43 years in the same building at a Cornish air station, the Royal Navy’s Met School has closed down to relocate to Devonport Naval Base.

The RN Hydrographic, Meteorological and Oceanographic School – more widely known as RNSOMO or just the Met School – has trained thousands of Navy meteorological and oceanographic forecasters and observers since it moved to RN air station Culdrose from HMS Harrier in South Wales in October 1959.

Several have gone on to become famous faces on regional and national television as Met Office forecasters, including the David Braine, Richard Edgar and Philip Avery.

The unit will relocate with the other facility of the school based at HMS Drake, and the merged sections will be known as the Maritime Warfare School, Hydrographic and Meteorological Training Group.

To mark the end of meteorological training at Culdrose, a ceremonial sunset took place, during which a special met-balloon flying a paying-off pennant was launched.

A number of former staff instructors and METOC/HM branch officers and ratings attended the event.

No civilian jobs will be lost as a result of the move, and another unit will now move into the vacated building at Culdrose.