Weather used to be three dropdowns you completed from memory, once per application, usually days after the job. Everybody knew the value was roughly made up, and it was on the record anyway.
It is now filled in for you, from the farm's location and the times the work was actually done using a database of historical weather.
Per block, not per application
Each block on an application carries its own start and end time, and its conditions are looked up for exactly that range.
An application that ran over three days because of rain gets the conditions of each of those days, on the blocks that were sprayed on them — not one set averaged over the whole job. At an audit the question is what the conditions were when that block was sprayed, and that is now what the record says.
A forecast that becomes a record
Record a job today and the only thing that exists is a forecast, so that is what is saved — and it says so on the page, marked forecast.
About five days later, the measured record for that date is published, the value is looked up again, and the forecast is replaced by what the weather actually was. The mark disappears. That happens once, on its own, and you do not have to come back for it.
So a document printed in those first few days may carry a forecast — which is why it tells you so — and a figure that looked wrong last week is worth another look.
What the three values are summarised from
Not from the day. From the hours the block was being sprayed, and each of the three is summarised differently:
- Conditions — the worst in the window. A shower in the middle of a clear afternoon is what mattered to the job.
- Wind — the band the strongest gust falls in. Drift is caused by gusts, not by averages.
- Temperature — the average across those hours.
What you enter yourself stays
If you were there, you know better than any model does. Enter the conditions and they are marked user-set, and nothing automatic touches that block again — including the step that would otherwise replace a forecast.
The bulk Set weather action starts on blocks with nothing on them yet, so it cannot overwrite something you recorded. You can tell it to replace everything, but you have to ask.
Where it cannot help
Two cases. A farm with no location on it has nothing to look up from, and an application from before the measured archive starts cannot be filled in after the fact. Both say Weather unavailable instead of guessing, and both take a value typed in by hand.
The details — the five states, why the value changes exactly once, and what to do about an unavailable one — are in Where the weather comes from.