The Rural Voice, 1988-03, Page 37proportion of the population.
Question: To what extent should
farmers make use of their own weather
apparatus, that is, a barometer, weath-
er vanes, rain gauges, etc.?
JC: I'm convinced that if a farmer has
access to a barometer at his site and
access to some sort of indicator of
wind direction and speed ... with those
two bits of information, along with the
general forecast for the area, he can
become very knowledgeable about
what is going to happen in the next 24
hours. And that's why I think we
should be spending some effort on
educating people to know how to take
best advantage — how to listen to a
radio forecast, how to look at a
forecast on TV — and make the most
of it for their particular area.
Question: How can farmers gain
the most benefits from radio and TV
weather forecasts?
JC: I think what the TV forecast
can do is give you an understanding
of what's going on. We have both
visual and verbal. We can show you
the map. However, what radio can do
that we can't is give up to the minute
forecasts. Radio does the weather
three or four times an hour; we do it
four times a day. We (at CFPL-TV)
probably spend less time on the fore-
cast in terms of presentation time than
other stations, but we spend more time
in our weathercasts at helping people
understand what's going on.
Now, I'm not sure that the media
should necessarily be in the business
of educating people, but I think with
weather it's different because we are
very much in the process of leaving
weather forecasting as a guess or as an
art form and moving to weather fore-
casting as being more a science. So,
if people know where we're coming
from in terms of what we're forecast-
ing, they have a far better appreciation
for when we are wrong. Because
when they get up the next morning
and the weather is as we talked about,
great! But when they get up and it's
not the way we forecasted, then they
can understand that a certain front has
come through faster than Campbell
thought it would, or it's slowed up, or
it's come further north.
Question: Is long-range weather
prediction possible for the farmer?
JC: We are already putting together
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24 Hr. Emergency Service 1-800-265-9255 pager #3640
MARCH 1988 35