Weather Tales: Scott Kehler Sets the Record Straight at St. Jean Farm Days ‘23

Australia I believe had this huge boisterous laugh and said, “Harry I hate to burst your bubble but first off, 1 guy writes that for them in Los Angeles. Second, tell your dad he is just as well off, flipping a coin.” why these myths appear to be true.”

Some people think that when one month is wet, we will have wet the next month.

We’ve all heard the socalled weather tales about if this happens then in so many days this will happen or how accurate is the Farmer’s Almanac or the good ole Country Guide many years back with the monthly weather forecast.

My father, Henry C. Siemens farmed hard and well but back in the day when I was attempting to grow up, farming 1,000 acres plus in the Red River Valley; he always looked forward to the Country Guide and in particular the weather page.

When I became a farm broadcaster and had the nerve to speak to the editor of the Guide David Wreford, I told him how much my father liked the weather page of the Country Guide. David from

Wow did that ever burst my bubble. Fast forward to the 2023 St. Jean Farm Days’ first day when Scott Kehler of Weather Logic in Steinbach, MB spoke to farmers about weather myths and what not to look for and take as the gospel.

Kehler did some research for his farmer clients because they told him for years that either 90 days or 100 days or six months after fog, it’s supposed to rain.

“And the reality is it doesn’t appear to be a true but a myth. So, for example, we see the chance of rain in the spring months, May through June is about one in three. So the chance of you getting rain on a given day was about one in three. And that’s probably

Scott said some people think that if you have a wet April, that automatically means May and June will also be wet. So you have a wet spring. Well, that’s not true. So one month being wet does not automatically mean the next one will be wet. If you’re in a longterm wet weather cycle, that might mean you’ll get more wet months than dry. But just when you look at one month to the next, they don’t necessarily correlate.

Supercomputers play a huge role in weather prediction.

“You might not realize it, but computers strictly make many weather forecasts you read online with no humans involved. And so people might wonder, why does my forecast change every 12 hours or six hours? Is that person behind the desk up to something?” But the computer updates every six or 12 hours, creating a new forecast you may see.”

Scott also answered some questions from the audience in particular on climate change.

“Yeah, climate change is, well, I didn’t tell you it’s a hot topic, but if I were a farmer, I would be most concerned about whether or not the extremes are changing. We don’t see changes in the averages. So the average precipitation you get in a year that’s not changing, at least not yet, probably won’t change dramatically soon, nor is the temperature changing. But I am most concerned about what happens if we see trends where 2020 is the driest year on record and 2022 and more often to be very, very difficult to plan around that? So that’s what I’m more concerned about. But having said that, I don’t have the data to say that it will continue to be more common. But I think for prairie farmers, given that our averages aren’t changing, the extremes would probably be more difficult to manage. So that would be more common.”

As I said the weather keeps changing, and so do the myths, and as computers get bigger and more powerful, human input will be less and less. With more computer modelling and less human input, a slight tweak here and there can make those models