Joanna Donnelly 'running way' at Dublin Airport hours after RTE bombshell
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Weather presenter Joanna Donnelly has joked she is "running away" as she posted a video from Dublin Airport just hours after her shock RTE departure.
The popular weather presenter surprised viewers when she ended her Easter Monday night forecast with the announcement that it would be "my last forecast". The 54-year-old concluded her segment on RTE's Nine O'Clock News with a poignant farewell: "And that is my last forecast. Goodnight and goodbye."
The following day, the mother of three was seen strolling through the airport alongside her husband. Taking to social media, she said: "We're going away. I'm not around. There's been a lot of people asking me if I'll talk this week. No. We're running away."
She promised to "talk when I get back". After arriving home on Monday night, Joanna told her fans: "I didn't want to leave without saying goodbye." Reflecting on her career, she added: "I've been on the weather forecast nearly 10 years I think at this stage between training and being operational."
Joanna reminisced about her enjoyable time as a weather presenter and the opportunities it brought her, including her participation in Dancing With The Stars earlier this year, which she "really enjoyed", reports the Irish Mirror. She also celebrated the publication of two books, crediting her role for these achievements: "I've gotten two books as well, which I'm so proud of and I'm so happy to have been given that opportunity."
Addressing her departure, she clarified: "I do want to say that my leaving has nothing to do with my work product. I've always given the very best I could possibly give to the weather forecast. So I hope anybody that's wondering what happened, it wasn't the forecast.
"I've been with Met Éireann almost 30 years. I started in Met Éireann in August 1995 in the middle of a glorious heatwave. It was a beautiful summer in 1995, you never know, this might portend a good summer for us yet.
"The years that I spent before I was a forecaster and then as an early forecaster, as a novice forecaster, with my small children, then my years struggling with infertility and then there was running the charity and then I went on TV."
"I've been on TV nearly 10 years and 30 years just went by in the blink of an eye." And now what? I don't know. We'll see. We'll see what happens next. Chapter three."
Having joined Met Éireann back in 1995 as a meteorological officer, Joanna later became a meteorologist in 2000. Since February 2002, Joanna has been gracing the airwaves as a forecaster on RTÉ Radio 1.
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