Satellite Freeze Warning (1970s)

[Music] [Music] most of us take it for granted that there'll be fresh fruit in the stores all winter long but Citrus Growers often have trouble getting oranges and grapefruits to our supermarkets during the cold season in the past few years Fruit Growers have spent millions of dollars trying to save their crops from Winter freezes these oil heaters are used for freeze protection Crews can set them up early in the evening and Flames will warm the orange or grapefruit Groves until morning many nights during the winter Florida Growers are faced with the decision whether to call out standby freeze protection Crews at a cost of about $36,000 per hour or to risk having crops ru ruined by an unexpected freeze but now NASA the University of Florida and Noah the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are developing a system to warn Growers about freezing temperatures using a computerized and more accurate means of forecasting the freeze line information from the goes one weather satellite is received at the rusen National Weather Service Station just east of Tampa Bay and relayed around the state alerting Growers when and where to protect their Groves we collect up to 3 hours of data from the key stations and at 8:00 p.m. we enter that data into the computer at that time we will have our 8:00 p.m. satellite scene in the computer it takes a few minutes to type the data in and from that point on it's very fast the computer takes over over and produces the maps so by about 8:30 in the evening we can have our predicted maps for the rest of the evening okay Jim here's the key station data for this hour okay soil temperatures 55.3 52.7 51.3 air temperatures 55.2 56.3 57.8 D point is 35 this is the o2z picture yes looks like we've got mid 40s in Central Florida perhaps some near freezing temperatures in north central let's blow this area up up in north central okay yes that's the area yeah it looks like there there are some temperatures right at 32 up in North Central Florida that correlation real closely with the reports we received from Growers Florida has certain Cloud patterns that make it conducive to satellite weather predictions a normal severe freeze for Florida produces a very dry air mass over the state which eliminates any Cloud covered and this is one thing that makes the system work well in Florida when we have very very cold temperatures we do not have clouds obscuring these satellite data it gives us a very clear picture of the using the satellite scenes oil heaters computers and satellites working together to help Citrus Growers bring an abundance of winter fruit to our supermarkets [Applause] [Music]