Channel 7 weather presenter Jane Bunn will spend the day talking agriculture, technology, television and, of course, weather, when she visits and officially opens the Henty Machinery Field Days on Tuesday. Photo: Supplied.
Meteorologist and weather presenter Jane Bunn is looking forward to returning to the Riverina this week when she officially opens the Henty Machinery Field Days at 11 am on Tuesday 17 September.
She has fond memories of the early days in her career when a Deniliquin irrigation group would fly her in a small plane to the area to talk to farmers.
“I felt like quite the highflyer,” she laughs.
“I’ve been to the Riverina a lot, but some of my earliest connections were when I would come up and do talks about understanding the weather, what to look out for on weather maps, why it was raining, why it wasn’t raining and the seasonal outlook.
“Travelling to Deniliquin, we’d take off from Ballarat in a little plane after I’d finished my segment on WIN News; we’d go to the local club, give the talk, have a bit of dinner and then they’d fly me back later that night.”
Jane is a highly credentialed meteorologist with an infectious enthusiasm for the weather. She has an atmospheric science degree from Monash University and a graduate diploma of meteorology from the Bureau of Meteorology.
As Channel 7 Melbourne’s resident weather forecaster and presenter, Jane is featured on the 4 pm and 6 pm news, as well as national bulletins and special events.
After her official proceedings at Henty, she’ll be presenting a session at 1:30 pm in the new Agtech Alley and speaking on stage at 2 pm in the Country Lifestyle Pavillion.
“I feel like this is a part of the world where we can utilise great technology which can help you know what is going to happen with the weather,” she said.
“I want as many people as I can to understand the value of that knowledge and to be able to take advantage of it and mitigate the problems that might be coming our way. That’s why I’m excited to be visiting this area because there’s a lot of people and farm businesses that can benefit from this.
“Ag Tech Alley presents a great opportunity for me to show some new methods to help you mitigate things like frost and work out ideal spraying windows, and take advantage of key indicators like evapotranspiration, growing degree days, chill hours, livestock stress and pests and diseases – anything weather related that impacts your decision-making.
“It will be exciting to go through the latest technology that is available.”
What’s the outlook for spring? Jane Bunn says she’ll have more detail on that to share at Henty and also looks forward to talking about her career in meteorology at the field days. Photo: Supplied.
Jane is the founder and CEO of Jane’s Weather (janesweather.com), helping Australian farmers make decisions to take advantage of the weather with their unique Consensus Forecast and Alerts Service. As a weather consultant, Jane provides advice to a range of farming communities and organisations in the agricultural sector.
While her childhood was spent in the city she says she loves the country just as much as the next person.
“One of the reasons I started Jane’s Weather was to help a lot of my friends that are in the agricultural industry.
“I might not have grown up on the land, but I now have a property in the country, which I love, and I married a boy from the country, so I think that helps me qualify!”
She said she loves nothing better than coming down the driveway of her farm southeast of Melbourne after a hectic week presenting forecasts and outlooks to millions of viewers.
“I’ve got a hectic job in the city during the week and I drive home on a Friday night and as soon as I go down the driveway it’s like everything changes.
“I let out this big sigh, and no one bothers me again until I go back into the city on Monday. It’s a lovely feeling of escapism and being exactly where I want to be – even if a lot of my time is spent fixing things that the wild weather has destroyed!”
Jane will talk more about her career during her appearance in the popular Country Lifestyle Pavillion.
She will share her journey from science geek to television personality and her career highlights.
“I am a meteorologist by trade originally; I was at the weather bureau to start off with.
“I grew frustrated that the media would change the words and change the meaning of the forecast, and I used to ring up radio stations and say, ‘Please can you just say it this way because you are putting wet weather in a dry forecast’.
“That frustration led to me wanting to remove the middleman here, so to speak, so I went into the media side of things. At Henty I’ll share some stories about my time with the weather channel and then WIN News across southeast Australia and what that was like, and then about my time at the ABC.
“It will be a bit of a behind-the-scenes look at what it’s like to be a television presenter, a bit of a ‘day in the life’.”
The highly credentialed meteorologist says as a weather presenter it’s incredibly important to accurately communicate information to make sure you can help people prepare for what they need to do. Photo: Supplied.
Jane encourages young people to consider a career in the study of weather.
“I would say to any budding meteorologist that it’s amazing that you have an interest in this, because it affects so many people and their lives.
“There’s a significant impact here – if you live in the city and you didn’t realise a downpour was coming and you get drenched, well that’s concerning but hopefully not going to affect your livelihood.
“In agriculture you live and die by weather patterns so as a meteorologist or weather presenter it’s incredibly important to accurately communicate this information and make sure, to the best of your ability, you can help people prepare for what they need to do.
“It’s a really exciting field to be in.”
She admits that the first thing she does when she wakes up is check what happened regarding the weather overnight.
“Even if I’m not working, I’ll check what the latest guidance is and work out which model has got a good handle and which one’s doing a bit poorly and then think, ‘OK, this is what’s most likely going to happen’. So, if that is what excites you then welcome to the club, it’s a great place to be!”
She said there was always a need for more people who had an interest in broadcasting and communications and who could take a complicated subject and turn it into something viewers or listeners could understand.
Like anyone stepping in front of the camera for the first time, there were initial nerves, she said, during her first live to air broadcasts.
“Yes, it was a little bit scary.
“It’s live television, anything can happen, particularly if you are at the Royal Melbourne Show,” she chuckles.
“One of my first experiences involved having a goat nibbling at my legs and the cords that connected me to the camera.
“Our poor producer had to get down on her hands and knees and go through the muck to try and get the goat away; yes there’s always lots of things going on behind the scenes!”
As she’ll no doubt be asked at Henty, what can we expect in the Riverina going into spring and summer?
“What I love about spring is that it is the fight between hot and cold, so we’ve still got a bit wintry weather to look forward to, because we’ve still got a lot of cold air to our south, but things start to heat up over the interior and push into the southeast, and our weather patterns try and sort out that imbalance.
“We end up with big weather changes that come through, so we could see a lot of gusty winds, and while it’ll be baking one day, we could still end up with some snow on the ranges the next.
“In terms of rainfall, I know everyone is hanging out for that, and to know where we are going in that space I’ll give you the latest update when I’m at Henty on Tuesday!”
Loading ...
