New Way For Farmers To View Last Front Of Spring

28-Nov-2006

New Way For Farmers To View The Last Front Of Spring

The last weather front of this windy spring will be crossing the country on Wednesday and Thursday bringing another dose of wind and rain. MetService has issued heavy rain warnings for Wednesday covering western areas of the South Island and strong wind warnings for Inland Canterbury,Marlborough, Wellington and Wairarapa. Central parts of the country may also get some heavy rain on Wednesday night and Thursday morning.

"This front provides farmers with an opportunity to try out the new rural weather web pages on the free MetService.com web site", said MetService Weather Ambassador Bob McDavitt. "At this year's National Fieldays we gathered ideas from farmers about what weather information they wanted from the Internet and we have now put these together in our rural weather section."

"Farming is all about turning rain into dollars, and so it isn't surprising that rain information is top of the agenda for farmers. Our rain section provides a national view on rainfall for the past week, the past day, a radar loop for the past six hours, and a computer model giving expected rain for the next three days."

"The first page in our rural weather section indicates the latest weather warnings and provides a place where anyone can click on their location to get quick access to a regional forecast covering the next ten days. This will help farmers plan their activities over the next few days." Farmers know how their place varies from a spot down the road. "On our 23 regional pages we offer 40 spots with a full hour-by-hour weather-graph covering temperature and rainfall giving today's observations and a forecast going out until the day after tomorrow. MetService is also providing local weather updates via text messaging so that anyone can get a weather update anytime on cell phone."

The months of summer start on Friday, and for southwestern parts of the country this may be a cool and wet summer. MetService rural weather includes free access to a seasonal outlook that gives an overview of likely weather patterns for the next two months.

ENDS

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