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Predicting winds of change

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MANY Hong Kong people would feel lost without their weather friend 'Freddie'.

Freddie, the cartoon figure that appears daily on television weather report, signals whether people should bring along an umbrella, a windbreaker or perhaps, a pair of sun-glasses the next day.

The real Fred, however, are 15 meteorologists who work around the clock on shifts at the Royal Observatory's Central Forecasting Office (CFO), producing the most updated weather bulletins for the press, radio and television.

'The five-minute forecast on TV or radio is actually a much simplified version of all the complicated data we deal with at our office,' said CFO senior scientific officer Poon Hoi-to.

'Information on the atmospheric conditions files in each day from every source, including ships, aircraft, land stations, weather buoys, numerical reports from overseas, weather satellites and radars,' he said.

But thanks to modern technology, almost all the weather input is now transmitted electronically to the century-old observatory, which has gone highly automated.

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