What is the NOAA

The NOAA stands for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and is a federal agency that responsible for monitoring and producing reports concerning all types of weather and environmental situations around the world.

The NOAA can be thought of as an overall body that provides information to a wide range of countries, where thenational weather forecasters, and a number of private weather forecasters use this information to provide detailed weather forecasts in their own country.

The information provided normally relates to specific weather conditions, as well as forecasting patterns and trends in weather, which may be used for long-term planning.

This information is crucial in many industries, but none more so than farming and agriculture. Farming, by the very nature is work has to be done all year round, mostly outside, and needs to take account of weather conditions in order to maximise effectiveness both of the workers and machinery involved.

Farming is also at the mercy of extreme weather conditions, and advance planning is often crucial in order to have any hope of maintaining some type of normality in the face of such conditions.

Whilst NOAA information is readily available nowadays, historically it was possible to buy a specific NOAA radio, butconstantly update specific weather forecasts and warnings for a particular area. While many people the Israelis have now been updated by the Internet. People especially those with poor Internet access may still provide a useful tool when planning work around specific conditions.

Rain is often the bugbear of farmers. Rain is needed for a number of reasons in terms of being able to grow crops and the animals, but the reality is often that there is either too much or too little of it. Farmers experiencing a drought have real problems in terms of the plan around the potential yield of a crop, or how it came to affect a herd of cattle or other livestock.

The other extreme is when there is too much rain, either over a specific period of time, or when there are violent storms and rainfall in a particular area heavily exceeds what would normally be expected.

Too much rainfall can cause real problems in terms of health and safety issues on a farm, as well as problems in terms of affecting the work of the farm itself.

Too much rain can seriously affect the ability of agricultural equipment such as tractors to be able to perform properly and safely. It is quite often impossible for tractors to get a proper grip on land where they need to in order to operate safely. It is also equally possible that a tractor or other piece of agricultural machinery can get stuck in severe muddy conditions, making it impossible to operate, and potentially putting the life of the operative at risk.

The main risk from excessive rain is flooding. This is a common problem for a huge number of farmers, as their soil becomes more and more saturated, and is unable to hold any water that runs into other land and can quickly generate severe flooding problems.

Flooding can create many problems of its own, in terms of damage to buildings, machinery, plant, animals and crops. The other danger, is trying to clear up the legacy of the rain or severe flooding, is the workers involved will try to compensate for the effects of the flooding by trying to clear up too quickly.

This can often lead to the areas of risk being ignored, especially if there are storage areas containing chemicals or solvents that are high risk, where special care needs to be taken, and professional advice should be sought.