The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - Family Feud: which forecast is best for farmers?

Episode Date: September 10, 2024

Hey there, Ruminant Listeners! These days, I'm mostly podcasting over at Farming in British Columbia, and I wanted to share a popular episode on a topic that matters wherever you're farming! If you like this, come and join the party. A good number of the episodes will hold interest for those outside of BC...search for 'Farming in British Columbia' wherever you listen to podcasts.

Well, hello there, ruminant listeners. It's your long lost pal, Jordan Marr. And while things have been pretty quiet here at the ruminant podcast feed, I'm here to let you know that there's a party going on over at a new podcast that I launched in February. It's called Farming in British Columbia, and it's where I've been putting a lot of my broadcasting energy lately. But I thought I would jump on the mic to say hi to't think you're going to be very interested in a podcast called Farming in British Columbia, you might be right, at least for some of the episodes, some of the episodes are pretty, pretty focused on the province of BC, but a good number of them are, while they take, while they kind of place the topic of the episode in the British Columbia context, they're still going to be of interest to farmers all over the place. And that's, I think the case for the one that I want to share with you

today. Shortly after I started producing Farming in British Columbia, a new listener reached out to suggest the topic that you're going to hear about in today's episode. It started out as some friendly tension between two brothers over the superior source of weather forecasting, and it turned into a pretty interesting set of conversations about how the weather forecast gets set. So what you're about to hear in full is episode 11 from the podcast Farming in British Columbia, which you can find on all the apps by searching Farming in British Columbia.

I recommend spelling that right out, British Columbia. If you tried BC, you'll have a little bit harder time finding it. I hope you are all well. I miss you and love you all very much. But if you like this one, come join the party. I'd love to have you over there. Hey, I'm Jordan Marr, and this is Farming in British Columbia, a podcast that frequently struggles to open feed and seed bags properly so that the string stitched into the top of the bag

comes out smooth as butter. A process that we can all agree contains the greatest gulf between the satisfaction of getting it right and just watching and feeling that string zip on out and the rage-inducing frustration of getting it wrong. You know, just sitting there frigging around with stitch after stitch as you stand there, hoping you're not the only one who gets it wrong, but fearing that actually, dummy, you are literally the only one in British Columbia who can't easily open a sack of annual rye. Today on the podcast, a pretty fun topic that was suggested by listener Quentin Bruns. Quentin and his partner Daniela operate Hamberlin Holsteins,

a dairy farm in Mara in the North Okanagan. Their place is right next to Wild Flight Farm, a market garden operated by Quentin's big brother, Herman, and his wife, Louise. Quentin contacted me to tell me that he and Herman disagree about the best source of weather forecasting. So I went out to Wild Flight Farm a few weeks back to interview the brothers about their competing forecast loyalties. And then I got on the horn with a couple of meteorologists to ask them why and how weather forecasts differ in the first place. I had fun with this one and I learned

a lot and it is my sincere hope that both of those things happen to you when you listen to this. So we'll kick things off in Herman and Louise's living room and then I'll introduce each meteorologist in turn. Talk to you in a bit. All right, Herman Bruns and Quentin Bruns, thanks a lot for joining me on Farming in British Columbia. Yeah, it's interesting to be involved. Quentin, so you and Herman have farms essentially side by side out here in Mara in the north of Okanagan. And you told me that you two have had disagreements over the superior source of weather forecasting for your area. So let's start there. Quentin, what is your

favorite source of weather forecasting? Yeah, well, I definitely lean towards the Weather Network. I do like how they have their webpage web page set up and there are certain bits of information that they include in their forecast that Environment Canada does not and that's definitely pushed me in their direction okay Herman what what do you prefer well Well, yeah, I'm the Environment Canada convert, or I prefer that. And basically, I think for similar reasons, they have most of the information I need. I will grant Quentin that Weather Network does have sometimes some information that Environment Canada doesn't, but I love the clean, no advertising app, and it's just a lot faster and easier to get to. And the main thing, too, I think I feel, if we want to get into it a little bit, is that I get the feeling that the weather network is more of a for-profit model and that

they like to or that maybe they've even structured their algorithm to make things more extreme like my experience is that if you know we're being called heat waves being called for, they'll be like two, three to four degrees higher. Or if it's a if it's a frost, they'll be like three, four degrees. And I feel like what they're trying to do is is they're trying to generate headlines out of the weather, weather drama. Yeah. Weather drama. And so that they can generate clicks and get people coming to their, because they've got to get people going with all the advertising that they've got on their website. They've got to get people coming to it. And that's sort of the feeling I sometimes get with them,

is that they tend to be a little bit more extreme on things. And I feel like Environment Canada hasn't got those sort of competing interests. They just sort of present it in the scientific way. And that should be the cleanest and most unbiased weather around. So that's sort of one of my main reasons for choosing them. All right. And Quentin, how do you feel about your brothers? Yeah, I think that's a fair criticism i i i would concede that that the weather network uh tends to to dramatize their forecast a little more razzle dazzle yeah yeah

for sure um but having said that i i don't i don't mind that as long as the general trend is correct i don't mind like if if there's going to be rain in the forecast, and I'm thinking about cutting some hay, I do want to be alarmed. And then, you know, when it comes down to it, so I really appreciate the fact that Weather Network does a 14-day forecast. For me, that's really interesting information, even if a lot of times they're completely full of it. But it kind of signals a bit of a trend. And very often in the general trend, they're going to be right, even if the details are out to lunch. So then I can, I will check Environment Canada. If they're both saying the same thing, then I'm feeling very confident that I'm good to go but for me the ultimate

the ultimate decider for me on preference for the weather network is the fact that they when they give a percentage chance of rain like 60% chance they accompany that with the expected amount of precipitation whereas with environment canada like 60 chance of showers well man it makes a big difference is that a millimeter or is that 20 millimeters they don't give you a hint even so i like i don't know why they don't have the balls to come out and make a prediction because Cause it sounds like for you, then if you see that at DC, then you're heading over to weather network anyway, to ask them how many millimeters. Right. Like how much are we talking? Because that makes it like, I'll, I'll cut if it's a 60% chance of a millimeter, big deal.

But, uh, you know, 20 millimeters matters. Okay. So that I wanted to establish how much the weather matters in your respective farm businesses because you do different farming so i'll start with you quentin like what where does it where is it really crucial for you what parts of your farming oh man um it is almost non-stop it's it's almost non-stop it's it's kind of scary because there's there's maybe two or three months of the year where checking the weather app isn't the first thing I do when I wake up. You know, like it is really, it's like literally wake up, grab my phone. Okay, what are we looking at today? And that'll, you know, in some part determine, you know, what I'm going to be doing

that day or for the next couple of days. But in the spring, you know, we've got manure spreading to do that you want to time with the precipitation. Summer, certainly haying, which is kind of going on all summer long. Fall, same deal. We're, you know, harvesting corn or wanting to spread manure again and have to be very careful about precipitation levels. And then, you know, it's a bit of a gap and then it's wintertime and like, okay, how much do we need to button up the barn so that things don't freeze in the cow barn or robot doesn't freeze up. So like, I'm really, really keeping an eye on the, on the freezing temps as well. Okay. So I'm hearing high stakes a lot of the year for you. Sure. I'm really, so you're a dairy farmer, Herman, you grow vegetables,

beautiful vegetables. I just had a tour of the farm. Um, I'm really, I'm quite interested in your response because of my own experience growing vegetables and how, where I rated the importance of the weather forecast, where, how, how does it, how is it for you? Like, you know, give me a, give me a sense of the difference between you check it. Cause you're curious versus what the stakes are for your farming. Yeah. I would say I'm kind of in the same situation as Quentin that, yeah, one of the first things I do is look at the weather app because I want to know what's going on. And because, you know, if our team is arriving at the farm

in the morning, I kind of have to have a general idea of what are we doing with them that day um you know we have lists of things that we do on particular days and sometimes we have to work around the the weather and and so i think having the weather every day is is is i would say maybe even more important because we are we're out there every day whereas quentin's quentin's in his cabin his tractor exactly yeah we're out there every day whereas quentin's quentin's in his cabin yeah we're out there physically like rain gear and you know everything uh whether it's raining or not we have to be there but um but see but but right there that's why i wasn't sure where you were going to go with your answer because you have to be there anyway whereas with quentin you know it's going to sometimes dictate like i am full stop. I'm not cutting the hay because that, you know, or whatever,

you know, that's why I'll tell you, I'll just, I'll just confess. Cause I actually feel a bit sheepish and guilty about this. Like you having heard what you said, you would be shocked as a veggie grower, how little I checked the weather forecast, like, because I'm a sloppy farmer. Let's like, I'll just be honest. It's it. It's I should have been checking it way more and it was not part of my ritual. And most of the time I did not know what was coming often to my detriment. Well, and what but, you know, I would qualify that in your case that you were working down south a bit more, especially in the summer. The weather is pretty predictable. Yeah.

Yeah. Whereas we get a little bit more variable uh we get more precipitation and that can really mess things up if you want to be planting that day and it's going to be raining you either got to get in there before before it starts running because in our soils as soon as they start getting a little wet it's game over for planting just forget it. You got to get out of the field. You can harvest, but you can't plant or weed for that matter. And then certainly in, you know, in the shoulder season, spring and fall, it's even more important with frosts and

things like that. Are you opening greenhouses, closing greenhouses? You know, what's the high temperature going to be? How much cloud is there going to be those kinds of things are important especially if you're going to be leaving the farm on weekends even uh you know we want to go and go for a hike or whatever but oh do we leave the doors of the greenhouse open or closed and so you gotta check well what's the what's the high temperature going to be how much cloud is there going to be and And all that kind of stuff, right? So anyway, I find it's really quite important for us. I need to push back a little bit on the relative importance of checking the weather to each of our farms. Because, I mean, certainly in the wintertime, I don't think it's as critical to you. So the only reason you're checking forecasts in the wintertime

is to determine what the skiing conditions are going to be for you. Well, hang on a second there. We also have to worry about greenhouses collapsing and markets. We do some farmer's markets outside all winter long. So I'm looking at, oh, like if we're going to revelstoke what are the road conditions going to be like is it you know if i if i'm sending one of my employees maybe i should go along because they're it's going to be dicey or whatever so you know um if they're driving there and chances of avalanche and yeah i just sort of find that i'm looking at it a fair

bit in the winter too and i'm'm worried about keeping on our greenhouse. You guys have convinced me that for any given topic I cover in the future on the podcast, I need to get siblings together to just like add an element of drama and tension. This is wonderful. Wonderful for me. Wonderful for clicks and listens.

Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Armel. How are you doing? Yeah, good. How's the farm doing? So right around the same time that I talked to Herman and Quentin, I interviewed Armel Castellan with Environment Canada. Right. Armel Castellan, and the title is Warning Preparedness Meteorologist with Environment Climate Change Canada. Armel agreed to join me to do his best to answer some of the Bruns brothers' questions.

Here's that conversation. Armel Casalan, thank you so much for joining me on the Farming in British Columbia podcast. Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you very much for hosting it. Okay, Armel. So what I thought, like with this, we have this overarching question of kind of how and why do different agencies' forecasts sometimes differ. So I thought we'd start with just a pretty basic question about asking you to tell me and my listeners about the different tools and techniques that go into determining a weather forecast. So obviously, I'll be talking about what you know best, Environment Canada, but maybe you could

kind of give us a sense of how the forecast ultimately gets determined. There's many parts to a forecast. And of course, we intuitively maybe know that big computer programs are being used. But before you get to the actual model output, which has come a long, long way over the last, you know, several decades, when computing has really kind of become such a powerful force, know several decades when computing has really kind of become such a powerful force you also need to have a network of stations that are maintained and calibrated both on the ground so whether it's at a lighthouse on a boat that's moving around on land at airports sometimes at elevation in the mountains, and into 3D space. So we have every 12 hours, a balloon will go up several places across BC, including our neighbors in Alaska, Washington State, and of course into the prairies.

And those balloons track and measure those very important elements like temperature, wind, humidity, all the way up the atmosphere until the balloon explodes way up at, you know, 10, 11 kilometers in altitude. And those pieces amount to an initial set of conditions that are extremely important to validate what is the atmosphere even doing right now. We can call it kind of the monitoring level where we have a baseline of actual observed conditions, whether it's the temperatures, as I said, the dew point, which calculates the humidity in the air, how much is falling, so it could be snow and rain and sleet and so on, as well as the wind regime. And then you can imagine that that shapes a very three-dimensional image that then gets ingested

into the modeling. And the models are there at the onset global in nature. And so they can't be 100% the size of, you know, an individual farm, let alone an individual house property. It's bigger than that. It's, you know, 10 by 10 or 15 by 15 kilometers in terms of the grid spacing. We then run that model to resolve all layers of the atmosphere in a supercomputer, which is based in Dorval, Quebec, and push it out to 10 days. So that's the global model. We have more high resolution models that really go down to even one by one kilometer. It's called the high resolution deterministic forecast system and But they only go out to 48 hours because of course when you reduce the size of the grid it

Asks a lot of those supercomputers and then they you can you can't run it out to 10 days So there's some obviously some limitations as to what the models can do. And then this is where kind of the statement that makes a lot of sense to a meteorologist, but may not be as common to the average person, that all models are false. And the reason why that's an interesting statement is because we're just approximating what the atmosphere is doing, which is extremely chaotic of an environment. Obviously, there's room for improvement and things have been evolving. We've had essentially being able to add an entire day by decade of computing power over the last three, four decades. So, you know, back in the 80s, there's no way we were talking about the weather on day seven. A lot of the times day seven is an impossible request out of the modeling

capacity, let alone a human, because humans do quite well, forecasters, I mean, in predicting in the boat, the 48 hour window. Beyond that, often the computers are doing a better job and we you know give credence to what it can handle and what it can't so i i want to go back to your original summary real quick like i just want to tell you what i took away and then i'm combining it with some things that i think i already knew hopefully i'm accurate but essentially you really emphasize that there's a fundamental component of forecasting, which is the actual measurement using real tools, not just algorithms, right? So those go up in the atmosphere and other ways of taking data, then the data interacts with with models and algorithms. And then so where I'm going to riff

on what I've thought I've understood before is that you're really taking data constantly and comparing it to what happened when we had similar data in the past, like constantly taking the now and comparing it to what we know about what we could expect in the past. That's kind of how the models work. And then we're constantly refining those models. Is that some version of kind of sort of correct? Yeah, yeah. No, I like that way of explaining it, Jordan. I think you are reanalyzing the atmosphere continually. Some stations are, you know, by minute because you're getting a lot of precipitation and it would be good to know if you're getting 100 millimeters an hour for 5 or 10 or 15

minutes. And other times the information, as I mentioned, with the weather balloons is every 12 hours. But absolutely, the sensing of the atmosphere informs the modeling and reinitializes it on a continual basis. You're kind of recalibrating. Calibrating is a fun word because it just means that you're course correcting what you know of the atmosphere to what the model can then provide. And then of course, you'll never get out of the interpretation of that model output so that those computer models do a bang up job, but they're not perfect. And in fact, what we'll do is compare them to one another. the americans have a lot of models that we have access

to the europeans the japanese the french the uk all have big meteorological agencies that run their models certainly at the global scale all the time and you know we share our models with those agencies and vice versa and we can compare them and make really informed decisions on whether or not a model or two, and it could be the Canadian, is kind of out to lunch, what we call an outlier, and therefore needs to be respected, but not necessarily weighted any stronger, in fact, probably weighted less strong when it is an outlier. And then we go forward from there. It's so interesting because it's like if I take the supercomputer out of it,

I might have assumed if we were just talking about humans forecasting, I might have assumed that just on a point of pride, meteorologists are going to want to constantly be reviewing forecasts to determine how accurate they are or were in order to become better. But you're just saying it's a fundamental part of the the system is the constant analysis of how accurate the forecast was as these models are being continually refined. Yeah, I would go further and add a social, you know, science element to the metaphor of the models being reinitialized all the time and getting better for, you know, the next forecast period, but also apply that to a forecaster. I mean, there are studies that show

that forecasters forecast better for where they are located because they are continually being fed the feedback of what the atmosphere is doing in their own senses, with their eyes, the temperature, you know, their skin, in a location where there's so many more nuances at the meso and micro scale than, you know, we can forecast specifically. So, you know, we, human brains are capable of pattern recognition. And that's a big part of what we're talking about here. Humans are very much a part of the equation, to put the pun in there. And I think they'll stay that way. I'm not afraid for me or my colleagues' jobs.

It's certainly not into the medium term here. Earlier, at the very start of your summary of the tools, you talked about fancy measuring tools like balloons and other things. If we doubled the amount of measuring tools, in other words, doubled the density of location of these tools, would that have quite a corresponding increase to accuracy? Is that a good way to think about it? Or what are the limitations of thinking about it that way? Absolutely. I mean, Canada is five and a half time zones. It's just absolutely enormous. We have different challenges than we do, say, in Switzerland, forecasting the weather,

you know, kind of a postage stamp in comparison. We don't have a density that is very enviable of more southern countries where access and capacity to implement, you know, stations right across the country. So if we had a lot more, we do better. And a great example of that is the COCORAS network, C-O-C-O-R-A-H-S.org is a kind of a citizen science driven participatory collaborative community. And so people who participate are able to measure every 24 hours and add comments into a database that's then used both academically and also in near real time, because at 7 or 8 a.m., when all of that information is ingested into their computer system, you know, forecasters use that and will look at and verify precipitation estimates. Were they on board and do they compare well to the official airport stations, for instance? And, you know, you can always use extra data, especially when it's

relatively coordinated. All right. So let's go back. I want to take us back to this kind of main thread or main question here. So I think you've given us some good context to start out with. Armel, how or why might two agencies that offer forecasts for a given region, how or why might they differ? What goes into having them predict different weather in a given region? You know, it all depends on who's producing it. And it might not even be a who, it might just be a what. And so if it's the stock weather application that you find on any given smartphone, chances are it's just raw model output as we call it. So it's not tampered with by a human because it's just absolutely just a kind of automated algorithm

that will scrape for a spot that you're interested in. But that output will routinely be But that output will routinely be easy to ridiculize because, you know, I will wake up here in my hometown of Victoria and, you know, compare what is being offered to me as a meteorologist. I find that quite interesting. And I'll often in the middle of winter be told, OK, well, it's minus 17 and you're going to get to a high of minus five. And in Victoria, that is not only unlikely, but almost impossible. And it can be really an interesting way to understand why raw model output is not always very helpful.

You can imagine that the models will have a trickier time dealing with all the micro climates of a place like British Columbia, because we have many mountain chains and obviously a big area and an ocean on one side, and sometimes the influence of continental Canada coming in from the north or from the east. And so that environment makes it extremely hard for raw models to make any sense of their output. only responsible for the BC and Yukon landmass, which is obviously very different from other agencies, which may have fewer or international eyes on it as opposed to local. And the big,

big difference, of course, is that we at Environment Canada have a mandate to issue alerts for public safety 24 hours a day, seven days a week, stats, holidays, everything. And nobody else does. And so we are issuing, you know, could it be wind related warnings, heat related warnings, smoke related alerts, rainfall, snowfall, colds, Arctic outflows, you name it. Those are the things that are going to be a very big headache for people who don't know they're coming and give people that type of very deliberate heads up on whether that is going to absolutely be related to public safety. So Armel, I told the two brothers in question

that I was going to be talking to you and I asked them if they had any questions. They submitted three that I have here. They didn't submit them with their voices. They used text. So I used a voice emulator. Do you mind if I play them for you real quick? Oh, go ahead. Yeah.

Awesome. Okay. So the first one is from Quentin, although this isn't Quentin's voice, as will be pretty obvious. So you'm going to, I mean, you're going to listen to this question now. Why does an environment Canada include the actual amount of precipitation expected in their forecast? It would be really helpful to know whether there's a 30% chance of two millimeters or a 30% chance of 20 millimeters. So does that ring a bell to you? I went and confirmed, I found that at least

the hourly forecast wasn't including how many millimeters when it gave a possibility of precipitation. So it's a great question. I appreciate it a lot. Yeah, I mean, first of all, chances of precipitation is fairly misunderstood, and we can get back to that after. But the fact of forecasting precip, whether it's rain or freezing rain or snow, hail, et cetera, is extremely hard. So it's much harder than predicting temperatures, you know, seven days out. Even tomorrow's convective elements in the interior of BC are going to be much harder to get quite accurate. And you could also say that, you know, in the middle of winter on the coast with the big atmospheric river event also has a lot of terrain driven features that are going to give you a big range in terms of what you might expect. So for any one location,

when we start getting above 10 millimeters of rain, which is a sizable amount, like it's definitely going to be a wet day out there if you're trying to ride your bike, or if you're farming, you'll definitely see the impacts of 10 millimeters of rain or more on the ground, whereas maybe a trace or a couple millimeters may not have a big impact if it's nice and sunny out. So when the quantities become part of the equation, part of the forecast, then we do include them in kind of 12-hour increments. So we'll talk about today being about 12 hours, tonight being another 12 hours. And so those part periods will include the amount of precipitation. the amount of precipitation. However, we usually don't include precipitation beyond 48 hours because there's just too much chaos to be realistic about it. And it's better not to give

the public or the users of the forecast false falsely leading information um really because you might that might change quite a bit it might go from a big strong bullseye as we're seeing right now for fort nelson you know next wednesday but you know i'm not going to advertise 200 millimeters that one or two models are indicating because by the time we get to you know Monday or Tuesday next week that forecast will have dramatically changed to likely less in this case and we wouldn't want to raise alarms by you know starting to talk about the the wildly chaotic nature of precipitation forecast you know beyond about 48 hours. Just back to my one of my first principles in this conversation was about where's the room to expand on and evolve into with the public similar to what a lot of the

european countries have evolved on and and weather ready nation down in in the united states is to really help provide a more probabilistic language and not as much deterministic language. So maybe the better approach to precipitation forecasting, back to the question of one of the brothers there, is to maybe give a better range and to give a sense of where things are more fuzzy and where they're more concrete. And that I think there's obviously room for expansion as we go forward in time. Yeah, I think like Quentin's a dairy farmer. And so he's no doubt it becomes most crucial for him when he's cutting hay and needs it to get dry.

And I think that's where his question comes from in terms of like, boy, would it help to know when I see that percent likelihood of precipitation, whether we're talking about a minute amount or a serious rain i think that's where he's coming from yeah yeah do you want to take this chance to to debunk some or or like talk about misunderstandings of the of the phrase you know pop probability of precipitation yeah so if i'm in a given region that a forecast is reporting on and it could be a large region like the north thompson right yeah and there's a 30 chance of of rain tell me tell me what that means for me in that region yeah so again yeah it's and i've had this conversation with media over the years and it's it's it's amazing because it's something that we put in

our forecasts all the time and yet it's often misunderstood. So in the case of you're in the North Thompson somewhere, whether you're in clear water or someplace like that, and you see the forecast giving you 30% chance of rain, say it's for the afternoon, you're essentially being told that the atmosphere has a pretty good chance, but it's not a guarantee to produce some rain or produce some snow for that period of time. And we are estimating that 30% of those chances are that it will bring those 0.1 or 0.2 millimeters or centimeters of the respective precipitation. So there's actually, in that case, a much larger percentage chance that you will not register that amount. And that's kind of the difference between a forecast of 30 pop or up in 70 pop, where you're kind of saying that the atmosphere when it behaves this way when we forecasted for the atmosphere of this nature in the past we are relatively certain in that case

70 chance is a much higher chance than 30 that rain or snow is going to fall but i get that point part but what i don't get is if for the 30% example, are you simply saying there's a 30% chance that Somewhere in the region in that Reporting region it will rain not not the whole region Not the whole region. Yeah, I got it. And that's all yeah, absolutely It's not region specific in in a in an area forecast or a forecast region it's different in the United States where

they will they have a gridded forecast so you can click on any little tiny grid all over the continental United States and it will pump out a top for that particular grid spacing and so that's a slightly different version of uh the you know that's a precipitation that we use in canada so they're a little bit uh they're definitely similar but they're not exactly the same and so they shouldn't be compared because they're not doing uh forecast regions for their for their outputs right can i play you another question from one of the brothers yeah okay this is this is. Although this, as you will definitely know, understand is not Herman's voice. Okay. The EC weather app provides a weather forecast for Mara. But as far as I know,

the closest stations where weather is recorded are in Salmon Arm and Vernon. They are probably using models to automatically generate the forecast, but sometimes the weather for Mara is quite different than for Salmon Arm or Vernon. Maybe they could go into how the weather model works and whether the forecast for towns with actual recording stations are more accurate than for locations that are 30 to 50 kilometers away. Since the valley gets quite a bit narrower toward Mara and north, there are times we'll get different weather like more cloud and precipitation than Vernon or Salmon Arm. There are times where I'll compare Vernon, Salmon Arm, and Mara, and make my own guesstimate for what the temp and precip could be in Mara.

So that's a pretty general one, but any comments? Yeah, I think, I mean, that's the reality. We talked about it early in our conversation, is the density of the network is only what it is, is the the the density of the network is is only what it is and add all the specificities of every last you know unincorporated small parts of a forecast regions in places that have their own version of you know the thousand microclimates of bc will know instinctively, just like this farmer friend of yours knows, that they need to adjust the forecast for their area. If they routinely go from Mara into Salmon Arm and Vernon and see that fog develops along

the highway near Enderby more than Salmon Arm, or that the proximity to the lake adds an element of moisture that is going to be stronger in one spot than the other then our forecast is just impossible to give those details even though you know we can you can look at uh the the radar signature because we have radar in that area you can look at the satellite image and kind of pick out the the valleys that get more more and kind of pick out the valleys that get more cloud than others and vice versa. So there's, yeah, there's an nth degree that you can go into quite strong details about one forecast versus the other. And I mean, that's part of why the private industry exists, that there's some need for spot forecasting that various industry requires that is beyond what the public forecast is able to do.

And sometimes those agencies, whether it's kind of academically driven or for a baseline, whether it's kind of environmental consulting, they might have to actually put down some instruments as a baseline for months, sometimes even years, in order to be able to provide a forecast or to provide information for the user in those specific settings. Armel, is there anything else you'd like farmers to know about your work or the work at Environment Canada before we say goodbye? Yes, I would just like them to understand that our forecasts are all manually

adjusted by trained professional meteorologists. And none of your phone apps are going to do that. And so this is where we have a very big difference. We know and we take that very seriously. And we put a lot of scientific energy into our forecasting system. And that's that's the last thing I would like them to know. Armel Casalan, thank you so much for being extremely generous with your time for an aspect of your job that is not the direct point of having someone like you who can get on the phone with journalists. Normally, I understand you're often talking about hazardous weather and impacts of weather, not just answering dumb questions from a podcaster. So I really appreciate it.

Well, I don't, I don't believe for a second. These are dumb questions. I think it's a hundred percent part of the outreach that is necessary to really kind of keep the population educated and along for the ride because there will be changes over the coming decades. Armel, thanks a lot. Thanks very much, Jordan. Take care. So that's what Armel at Environment Canada had to say. You may have noticed that he didn't offer any disparagement of the Weather Network. Both Armel and my next guest, Doug Gillum from the Weather Network,

stressed that they had no interest in slagging on each other in their interviews. So I refrained from encouraging the kind of slander you've all come to expect on Farming in British Columbia. With that said, here's my interview with Doug Gillum, a meteorologist who manages the forecast center for the Weather Network at its headquarters in Oakville, Ontario. Doug Gillum, thanks so much for joining me on the Farming in British Columbia podcast. Hey, my pleasure. Great to join you. Doug, how or why might two different weather forecasting agencies present different forecasts for a given region? How do we sometimes end up with forecasts that vary for, say, the North Okanagan region in British Columbia?

Well, it depends on the time frame we're looking at. But the simple answer is, I mean, the reality is meteorology is an inexact science at this point and really will always be that way. There are so many variables that impact the ultimate forecast. It's not just plug the numbers into an equation and outcomes a forecast that we know will verify perfectly. So, you know, there's different approaches to forecasting. I mean, many other outlets are going to use strictly a computer-derived forecast. There are computer programs that, you know, they are, they will put out the forecast without any human involvement. Whereas, you know, one of the things that we do and also Environment Canada does as well is there's a human behind the forecast. Outlets that just use a computer-derived

forecast won't be able to make those judgment calls but they are judgment calls and you know you can you can get two different opinions by looking at the the same data when you're when you're an agency as large as the weather network how does it work like you can't i would i'm guessing you can't possibly have people spread let's just talk about canada like throughout the country in all these different regions so how like with the weather network how how regional does your do boots on the ground get if at all are you is it centralized in in one part of Canada and then it's just the data that you're taking from across Canada or or how how does that work our office is in Oakville which is just outside of Toronto.

And we produced forecasts for all of Canada out of that office. There's dozens of models that produce forecast data. And we look at that data and we bring that data into our forecast system. And then we can do manual adjustments. And, you know, we'll forecast for all of canada that way but as you know we make decisions at varying levels like we may decide you know for this current setup this particular model has the best handle on southern bc weather and so we're going to go ahead and put in that model but then you go and you know we can go all the way down to 10 kilometer pixels.

And, you know, so it may be there's a pixel for Kelowna, a pixel for Vernon, a pixel for, you know, many different communities in the area. And you can go and make adjustments. And, you know, we're looking at one of the things that you really want to adjust for, you know know one or two degrees in temperature doesn't usually make or break for most individuals but uh we can look at satellites so that's looking down on a region and we can see that well the model said it would be clear by now but we've got clouds you're just stuck in the okanagan valley and so we can go in and just expand the cloud cover or increase the duration of the cloud cover through all the regions impacted by that. So satellite allows us to look down and see where it's clear versus where it's cloudy. And radar allows us to see where there's precipitation occurring versus where it's not.

Now, in mountainous terrain, the radar, I mean, the mountains do create a problem because you could be experiencing drizzle in the valley and the radar's just not seeing that. So that's where you have to try to get some ground truth somewhere to recognize maybe the forecast has gone off the rails. How about back further up the process, are the major agencies effectively using the same actual data? How does that work? Like to what sense is gathered data proprietary versus, you know, gathered for everyone in the game? Everybody's depending on Environment Canada for those conditions. They collect the data, they send out the data, and that's available equally to us as it is to really anybody in the world. Now, in terms of the

data that you get from the balloons that are sent up to give us conditions in the, you know, up where we don't live but where the where the weather happens up in the atmosphere uh that data is collected um or you know those balloons are launched at the same time twice a day around the world and that data is um you know collected and disseminated by a global the the World Meteorological Organization. And that data is, again, available to, you know, it gets ingested into all the models that are run. Now, some of the model data you have to pay for. And, you know, we pay for that data.

But, you know, that data, if you're willing to pay for it, is available, you know, to agencies around the world. is available to agencies around the world. I want to ask you a question that came directly from one of the farmer brothers that generated the idea for this story, because one of them really favors Environment Canada's forecast, and one of them really prefers the Weather Network forecast. And one thing that the brother who prefers the Weather Network network one thing he appreciates is that uh generally speaking when the weather network is is is forecasting precipitation they're more likely than environment canada to actually estimate an amount of precipitation because he you know for example

he produces hay and you know if there a, if there's a 60% possibility of precipitation, okay. Is it going to be for two millimeters or 12 millimeters? Because he can probably handle two millimeters if he's going to decide to cut hay, but, but 12 millimeters is a different story altogether. Why is that? Do you, do you, why do you take that tack at the Weather Network? You know, when we produce a forecast, we're always, I mean, the amount of precipitation is a critical component of that. So that's something that we're always generating as part of the forecast process. The question is, then it comes down to your platform and your app and your website.

What ends up being public and what ends up not being public? And, you know, that's something that we put out there because of the, you know, because there is value in that. There is, there are people who want that information. You know, we're a media outlet. that information. You know, we're a media outlet. And so, you know, our mission is to provide the information that's beneficial and valuable to the public. So, you know, we can put a little bit more of our time and resources into developing a platform that will be beneficial to, you know, provide the public what they want. Of course, as a meteorologist, I recognize that, especially in this critical time of year, during the growing season, where so much of our precipitation is scattered showers and thunderstorms, the meteorologists sometimes we kind of cringe at the fact that a number is going public because we know that with you know thunderstorms are are so hit and miss and the reality is you know that two or twelve millimeters may represent sort of an average of

what we would see in that area and yet you know on a day where there's popcorn showers and thunderstorms the expression when it rains it pours is very applicable and those who are impacted by the thunderstorm may get 25 millimeters whereas two kilometers away you get zero and that becomes very difficult to represent because you you know the media as a meteorologist i know that that number could verify wells and average for that 10 by 10 grid. And yet the individual farmer experience is unlikely to get exactly that amount. You know, we've all seen times where even across a large, you know, or across a small community, the amount of rain from one end of the community to the other can be significantly different. I have gone down the street and it's pouring and it wasn't raining

at all at my house. And so, uh, or vice versa. So that type of detail becomes, well, reality is it's kind of impossible to, you know, with much lead time to communicate on, on an app or a website. But then, okay. I want to link that to something you said almost at the outset of this conversation, which has to do with, um, expectations around accuracy. You know, one of your first comments was that it's, it's, it's, it's, it's really hard to be super accurate. It's just like, you know, it almost, I don't know. I almost think of like, what, what, what agencies accomplish is kind of magic. And I'm just wondering, do you think the public has developed over the decades, just unrealistic expectations around

what should be expected for accuracy given all of the variables involved? Yes. I mean, I love the fact that the public expects accuracy because, you know, I mean, because we strive for accuracy. And I think the fact that the public's expectations are so high now speaks to the progress of the science. What you would have considered to be accurate 25 years ago is not anymore. I mean, people want to know exactly when it's going to rain in their backyard. And I think that expectation wasn't there 25 years ago, but the progress that has been made is, you know, we always want to be

better and we always want what's being provided to us to be better. And I think as forecasts have become more accurate and as we deliver more details, I mean, you couldn't, I mean, 25 years ago, you didn't have an app or a website. And so, I mean, you just had a forecast on the radio that said scattered showers and thunderstorms for the next couple of days. There was nothing trying to tell you exactly when it would occur and how much. And so as forecasts have gotten better and as more details have been provided, with that has come an expectation, which we strive to reach. We strive to reach, but the reality is I can't tell you exactly how much rain will fall on in your backyard on a particular day when it's hit and miss showers and thunderstorms. I wish we could, but that really is beyond what the science probably ever will allow,

but we will always strive to be better. Doug, can you talk about the difference in the challenge of forecasting when you're talking about a fairly mountainous part of the country like British Columbia and specifically, say, the North Okanagan and as that blends into the foothills of the Rockies versus out on the prairies, say, in Manitoba or Saskatchewan? versus out on the prairies, say in Manitoba or Saskatchewan, does the challenge become much greater in terms of accuracy when we're talking about BC?

Absolutely. You know, just with the range and terrain over short distances, one, the models aren't going to handle that well to the, when you have, I mean, you can have such sharp contrasting conditions over short distances, um, in so many local effects, um, that, you know, when you're, you're looking at Edmonton, you know, the, the terrain is pretty consistent. You know, the terrain is pretty consistent. So, you know, you don't have, you know, in bees you know well it's very difficult to nail the temperature when the there's so much change in elevation over short distances on the flip side the terrain can cause consistent tendencies that become more forecastable as you get to learn the

area and this is where you just you have to beat the models and take the time to learn an area. And this is where reality is, a local farmer who is observing the weather can beat the forecast in a short term because they know that the thunderstorms typically miss their field or typically hit their property because of local effects. But so the terrain can cause some consistency

in the randomness whereas you get out onto the prairies they still get scattered thunderstorms and you're just left going well i don't like it's watching a a pot that's about to boil where's the first bubble going to come up i don't know it's totally random you know the bubble's going to come up and then there's going to be lots of them but without terrain to kind of give a trigger you don't know where the scattered storms are going to be whereas in bc for someone who's willing you know who's able to really take the time to learn how the terrain is impacting the weather. You can pick up on local effects that are not forecast by the models, but are still predictable because of their consistency. And they make sense as you know

the terrain. But that's for pattern recognition yeah and i guess there's always a risk of confirmation bias but if you're careful then something like you know i've observed that i live in a rain shadow because of those mountains that that's those these mountains over here um can really can really actually be um a reliable um tool in in a farmer assessing their own risk and their own forecasting. Absolutely. Farmers have to pay attention to their weather. Their livelihood depends on it. And someone who is a keen observer and, you know, maybe using what is forecast, but can recognize under certain setups, I usually get hit in this type of setup

or i usually get missed on a keen local observer can can really use the forecast and then do even better to know how it applies to their property or to their farm um as they uh you know as they as they learn pattern recognition is there anything else you hoped to get across that we didn't cover we've talked a lot about i think just, just kind of like, is it going to, you know, today's forecast, tomorrow's forecast? You know, I get asked a lot about, so why is our summer forecast different than another agency? And the answer is slightly different there. I mean, Environment Canada is very open about the fact that their seasonal forecast is just from a model. Whereas we look at models, but we use a different approach. We look at

years in the past that had similar global patterns. They're called analog years. I mean, that's just more accurate than the models. The key is, did you pick the right years? We can diagnose years where this year is going to be characterized by extreme heat or extreme drought. So that's a different scale of forecasting and a different approach to forecasting. But one, there's increasing interest in that, you know, if a farmer knows that this is a year where drought's a bigger concern or extreme heat's a bigger concern, or, you know, we're going to be dealing with a lot of rain this year, they can actually make some decisions going into the season based on that. And the hope would be if you're making those decisions,

there'd be some accuracy and results from that. Right. And it sounds like you take, you take pride in, in the weather networks job that it does on those long range forecasts. Absolutely. I mean, that's kind of, I mean, it's, I spent a lot of time on that. I take it very seriously. I fully understand the limitations of it, but generally I take pride in being able to diagnose the key drivers of a pattern for a season and trying to give information that could be useful, especially to, you know, to farmers because they're making important decisions. You're not going to change your weekend vacation plans around the seasonal forecast,

but you might change, you know, might impact your approach to the growing season. Just on my own farm, it can make, you know, if I care to pay attention to that, it can help me decide whether to plant a short season maturing corn or a long season maturing corn. You know, that's important.

Yes, yes, exactly. And that's the type of thing we would hope to be able to help with because we appreciate our farmers and if we can help them, that's great. That's a win-win. Doug Gillum, thanks so much for taking time to join me on Farming in British Columbia.

My pleasure. Take care. Well, some fun news is that I was able to secure an interview with a meteorologist from environment Canada. So I, this has been really interesting listening to you because I have this impulse to actually start revealing to you right now. Some of the things that you, cause you've, you've actually brought up stuff that we talked about in the interview.

I shared the questions that you submitted to me with the meteorologist, but I think I'm going to exercise some restraint and not not talk about that right now because you guys can listen with everyone else as to what what what armel from environment canada had to say i will we'll we'll wrap it up here i'll just ask you um you've touched on them already probably a little bit but like any any any weather forecasting gripes you want to get off your chest right now we've heard one from quentin about the lack of a pop number an actual like amount of precip from environment canada any anything else

yeah i think i i share that frustration sometimes too i i kind of wonder how they figure out the percentage of precipitation in the first place and i mean that is sort of a nebulous thing like today it was supposed to be 60% chance to showers well okay we got like three drops does that qualify for 60% chances that like a hundred percent like I don't know so whereas environment weather net was was saying 40% chance and less than one millimeter for each of the time periods. So it was kind of like six of one, half dozen others. They were kind of very close today. Well, this is great.

You're giving props to WeatherNetwork. And I got to give props to Environment Canada because I checked Environment Canada forecast this morning. And I see this thunderstorm warning. I was like, what the hell? I was just on the weather network. It didn't say anything. I go back to the weather network. There's nothing.

And for Environment Canada, severe thunderstorm watch. What the hell? This is like, how can you not have it? And sure enough, we had this wicked windstorm. I really think we need to end it there, that you two just acknowledge the other's agency it does a good job uh your listeners can't see that that was that was quentin giving his bigger brother a big kiss on the cheek this is really nice guy guys good vibes uh quentin and herman thanks so much uh well quentin thanks for the idea uh i'm looking forward to sharing this and i really can't wait to hear your um feedback on the interview with armel thanks

a lot guys thank you thank you okay that's it for now other than saying that quentin's original request for this episode was that i ask other farmers their preferred source of weather forecasting, which I went ahead and completely ignored. So if you're grateful to Quentin for inspiring this episode, maybe you'll consider sending me a voice memo to tell me what forecasting you trust. Instructions for sending me a memo are in the show notes of every episode, but here's my number. 250-767-6636. You can text or WhatsApp or signal me. Or email a voice memo to podcast at farminginbc.ca. And hey, I get it.

You'd like to send me something, but that would take you two or three minutes of effort. I can relate because it took me six to eight hours to produce this episode and many of those were spent editing in my garage and it's real lonely in here so please farmer won't you tell me who tells you when it's going to rain that's it for now talk to you soon everyone and remember we have more in common than all our differences would suggest

than all our differences would suggest. Okay, ruminant listeners, thank you for keeping my very quiet ruminant podcast in your feeds after all this time. And I hope to meet some of you again over at Farming in British Columbia. I hope you all had a good season. Talk to you when I talk to you. We never have laundry

We'll owe nothing to this world of thieves Live life like it was meant to be Ah, don't fret, honey I've got a plan To make our final escape All we'll need is each other a hundred dollars And maybe a roll of duct tape And we'll run right outside of the city's reaches

We'll live off chestnuts, spring water and peaches We'll owe nothing to this world of thieves And live life like it was meant to be Because why would we live in a place that don't want us? A place that is trying to bleed us dry We could be happy with life in the country With salt on our skin and the dirt on our hands i've been doing a lot of thinking some real soul searching and here's my final resolve I don't need a big old house or some fancy car To keep my love going strong

So we'll run right out into the wilds and graces We'll keep close quarters with gentle faces And live next door to the birds and the bees And live life like it was meant to be To the moon To the moon you