3 day forecast at least is vital IMO. Especially wind direction and speed, rain, nighttime lows, and frost predictions when relevant. But then soil temps and soil moisture levels are equally important and most seem to ignore those completely. :)

Awareness of the subsequent 3-4 days weather is helpful but iffy so an eye on the sky never hurts.

Dave

I guess we are the only 2 weather-watching nuts! :)

Dave

I am a weather watching fanatic also, but that has more to do with my other hobby than gardening. THEN there are the hurricanes that must be tracked.

You weather nuts would be very bored here in the Puget Sound area of the PNW. You have your choice,which changes hourly here in my 98467 location. It will either,with rare exceptions, be cool and overcast or cool and rainy.Life is not complicated,weatherwise,here.

I have probably saved myself from watering (not just tomatoes, but the rest of the garden) a half dozen times by paying attention to the forecast. Between that and my improved mulching, my rain barrels have barely been touched this year.

I also find it useful to have the local radar - http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/radar/index_e.html?id=WHK for my area- bookmarked, so I can check out exactly where the weather systems are around me. Has come in handy many times.

I watch the weather too. I follow the 14 day forecast, especially when we near time to transplant. That combined with soil temperatures helps me avoid chilling injury to my transplants.

Betsy

I love true people that love planting tomato plants.

The rookies of growing the beast of the garden, the tomato plant, should realize the importance of localized weather and never let it go (or take it for granted).

It is easier to me to do taken that the tomato grows so well, and strong,in comparision to other veggie plants. I know I have always been taken by the strength of it.

Think about all the factors(and options) that play into the scenario, if you took that next step of care and followed closely, the near weather.

It effects BER firstly, followed by ...well it controls everything in my opinion.

I could go on and on

Take care,
Travis

I use Weather Underground:
http://www.wunderground.com/
After setting your preferred location and saving that, you will have a page which includes the local radar and regional radar. Both can be animated. The regional radar, like the local radar, includes county boundaries.

Since my "local" radar tends to miss most of the precipitation in my county (presumably due to mountains being in the way), I use this page:
http://www.wunderground.com/radar/map.asp
to access two nearby "local" radars which include my location. One or the other is almost always better than my own "local" radar. But sometimes the regional radar is the best.

I also like this page from the Weather Channel:
http://www.weather.com/maps/geography/eastcentralus/eastcentralusprecipforecast_large.html
It's confusing to set up, but gives me a better idea of how much precipitation to expect than the local forecast does. (At least in my part of the world, this not so much a guarantee that there will be precipitation, but more a case of "if it does rain, this is probably how much rain there will be.")

Before I obsessed about gardening and tomatoes in particular, I spent a good deal of thought on the weather. I don't know how populated the http://www.americanwx.com board is for areas other than the northeast, but for that region, it's filled with weather nuts. You know, the kind of people who will read wave heights from buoys in the ocean. Right now, in the New England forum, the impending heat is taking a lot of attention.

I'm pretty obsessive about the weather myself. I use several weather resources to schedule when to work in the garden, when to plant & pick, and when to water. The local weather guys are ok, but you have to get through so many commercial breaks to get to the forecast that it tries my patience. They usually use the forecast as a "tease" to keep you watching the full 30 minutes of the local newscast!

I have three apps on my phone that I use several times a day: two weather apps, one giving the essentials (high & low temps, chance of rain, etc.) and one that tells me how much rain we've had so far, gives weather alerts, hourly forecasts, radar maps, etc. The third is a moon phase app which tells me when the sun will rise & set, moon phases, etc. I always have my phone with me in the garden, where it's also handy for taking photos of bugs I don't recognize.

On my laptop, I have the weather underground set for my latitude and longitude. I love that website, especially for checking to see exactly how much rain I've had during the week so that I know whether to water the garden.

On the Wunderground local radar page, use the "select radar type" link. The various types give different perspectives.

garf, that looks interesting. The next time we have storms in the area, I'll see what the different settings do. Thanks!

If I could get a reliable 3-day forecast, I'd be happy.

Three times so far this season, I was told that there was a 0% chance of rain for the next few days. So, reluctantly, I went out to water the garden - only to be rained on mid way through watering... I never turn down free rain, but so much for predictions. I had a similar forecast when I went away for a weekend - I chose to delay part of my garlic harvest since they forecast a week of dry weather - the skies dropped a half inch of rain the day I returned. I had to pull everything I had at that point before it got ruined - barely averted disaster there.

I check the weather multiple times a day, and I do feel it's important, but take it with a grain of salt. And like Dave said above - anything beyond 3 days out is basically a coin toss.

As I type this I have a second tab open in my web browser with a weather radar, I am willing the rain to come over my house!!!

I have Weather Module gadget on my Google page that shows the radar and any weather statements for my area. I wish I could find something similar for my iPhone, but have not found an app I like yet. So many of them have ads that move or twitch and that gives me a headache. The app that came with my iPhone is useless to me because 1. Their closest thermometer to my town is 15 miles away 2. Apparently, it's located on a sunny west wall because it reads temps that are much hotter than they really are, especially in the early evening. 3. They don't update the readings very often. 4. They don't tell me about the amount of precipitation and what direction it's moving.

I'm a trained Skywarn spotter. However that's different than a forecast. I don't listen to anything more than 24-48 hour forecasts as weather is so dynamic and can change very quickly.