Fruit Growers Get Lesson About Weather Forecasting

Citrus growers learned a valuable lesson this winter: They need to keep ahead of the weather through more scientific means than television forecasts, even if it costs money.

In April, National Weather Service budget cuts ended the agricultural weather predictions it had issued since the 1930s, leaving growers to fend for themselves or hire private meteorological firms.

Many growers who chose not to buy forecasts paid for it - a $3 million freeze that damaged many citrus trees when the mercury took a quick and unexpected dip the night of Jan. 19.

“People didn’t realize it got that cold until (later) in the morning when it was too late,” said Jennifer James of Gulf Citrus Growers. “That freeze woke everyone up.”

Although many growers have relied on TV weather and folklore for guidance on when to protect their crops, many others are going high tech, virtually becoming amateur meteorologists.

Some use the Internet to cull data. Others are setting up micro-weather monitoring stations in their groves. About 50 grove owners met here Friday, in a Gulf Citrus Growers conference on the new weather technology.

“Before NWS quit we already used a private weather forecaster,” said grower Chet Townsend of Turner Foods Corp. “You need to have multiple sources of information.”

Private industry is rushing to fill the void. For about a dollar a day, Alabama-based Agricultural Weather Information Service provides an Internet site with government weather data compiled to fit growers’ needs.

Boca Raton-based Adcom Telementry is working with another company to set up a private network of weather stations, $1,200 towers with temperature gauges, leaf-wetness meters, soil monitors other gear.

Another group of growers is trying to form a weather cooperative to share information via computer from grove to grove with newly developed software.

And the University of Florida’s agricultural program is providing information and services to the growers as well.

Predicting freezes is not easy, even for the experts. A marginal freeze can inexplicably kill one row of trees while those next to it untouched.

That’s why Bill Zeliff said you can still call him at 2 a.m. for a knowledgeable forecast. The former career Navy meteorologist, later a Ft. Myers television weatherman, is a one-man forecasting company.

“With all of this, the end result will have to be a one-on-one discussion with a forecaster,” he told growers at the conference.

He said no forecast is right 100 percent of the time. “Of course, if you are wrong too many times you lose customers.”