00:04At 90 years old, retired farmer Frank Pritchard starts his day the same way he has for most
00:10of his life, by checking the rain gauge and writing down a number.
00:20Inside his home office are hundreds of pages of weather observations, stretching back more
00:25than a century. They span multiple properties and generations.
00:29Snow. Snow. In New Angra. Oh yeah. That's not common. No, it's not.
00:36But he's one of a shrinking number of volunteers still keeping the books. The number of rainfall
00:41observations taken across Australia has fallen sharply over the past 50 years. 8,500 stations
00:48in the 70s, dropping to under 5,000. Those outposts aren't really there anymore,
00:53so there's not people to take those weather observations.
00:56This doesn't impact the ability to forecast the weather,
00:59but climate scientists say it does mean fewer opportunities to check the accuracy of forecasts
01:05after it's happened. In a warming world, this is especially important.
01:10I can get a dump of rain at my place and you might not get anything at your place two
01:14blocks away.
01:15We don't have stations there to catch that information, then we're going to miss out on
01:20that, which is going to affect the accuracy, not only of weather forecasts, but of climate projections.
01:26There are still families who recognise the value of keeping the records.
01:31Like Kojanup farmers Tim and Trish Webb.
01:34Just having that faith and hope that, yes, we've had those periods before and we'll have more again.
01:40They're fragile. They are.
01:42And no one's too keen to be the generation that lets go of a long-running family tradition.
01:48Keep the ball going, yeah, and don't let the side down.
01:52What do you guys want to do?
01:53All right, suppose you do anything?
01:54You don't want to go and keep all of your powers in
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