The Breton drizzle sometimes plays the surprise guest. Damn fog that is difficult to detect, even by the most efficient radars! And yet it is not for lack of being informed. Daily, and often several times a day, Grégory Mignard, photographer and videographer based in Finistère, checks the weather forecasts on at least three applications. “I cross-reference the information to make my little climate concoction and organize my day.”
Passionate about sailing and surfing, the Brest native cannot « [se] “be content with the temperature and cloud cover” or count on the luck of having “the right tide, the right size and direction of the swell”. But, he admits, consulting his favorite applications, Meteoblue, Windy, Windguru, popular with water sports enthusiasts, also serves as his daily steward. “Whether it’s to ride my bike, garden or simply avoid a squall by ten minutes, I like to have a constantly updated view of the weather during the day.” Vectors of “passion more than obsession”the applications have allowed him to discover knowledge that he likes to share with friends, and to endorse to his loved ones “a role of weather referent”he specifies.
Knowing the humidity level, wind strength, sunshine duration, the probability of rain within the hour, nothing could be simpler. And more shared. Predicting the weather has become a modern obsession. Every evening, more than ten million viewers continue to watch maps, pictograms and temperature forecasts, before or after the 8pm news on TF1 and France 2. Every day, on France 3, “Météo à la carte” details the variations in the sky and their impact on our lives. Local sites are multiplying, apps (free or paid) for smartphones number in the thousands. In short, we have become cumulus cumulus collectors.
An oracle in your pocket
Cloud tracking is of interest to both “weather-dependent” professionals (farmers, event organizers, tourism professionals) and ordinary people: from the athlete seeking to optimize their performance in the best conditions to the poorly equipped “bike commuter” worried about the imminent arrival of a storm, to the “weather-sensitive” who is feeling down during a rotten spring, everyone has their eyes turned upwards. “The dependence on the changing nature of the sky remains a backdrop to our ordinary activitiesrecalls Martine Tabeaud, professor emeritus of geography at the University of Paris-I Panthéon-Sorbonne. But it is the ways of doing and experiencing the weather that have changed.”
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