Every number on the farm weather board can be traced to a public, verifiable source. This page walks through the full path — where the data comes from, how we turn it into advice, and what its limits are.
Each of the 21 hubs is mapped to verified coordinates and one of six agro-ecological zones — because advice that fits the Shabelle valley can fail on the Bay plateau.
Your browser calls Open-Meteo, which blends ECMWF and national weather models (≈10–25 km grid, updated hourly): current conditions, a 7-day forecast and the past 30 days of rainfall.
For the 16 hubs on the Juba and Shabelle, a second call fetches the GloFAS river-discharge forecast for that hub’s stretch of river and compares it against 10 years of history.
A knowledge base compiled from FAO GIEWS, FAO SWALIM and FSNAU publications supplies each zone’s seasons, crops and planting windows. This part is expert-verified, not live-generated.
Fixed, transparent rules combine the live numbers with the calendar — no black box. Every sentence on the board traces to a rule plus a number you can see.
• A planting window is Open when the current month falls inside the zone’s FAO/FSNAU window.
• If a rainfed hub has received under 40 mm in 30 days and expects under 20 mm in the next 7, the board says wait for the rains to establish — planting into dry soil wastes seed.
• If forecast river flow exceeds the 80th percentile of its own 10-year history, the board flags high river flow; above the 95th percentile, very high.
GloFAS models river discharge on a ≈5 km grid. A town’s centre often sits off the river channel, where the model reports almost no flow — so for each riverine hub we scanned the surrounding grid and locked the query to the cell that actually carries the river. Jowhar’s signal, for example, comes from the Shabelle channel cell at 2.73°N 45.45°E, not from the town centre.
A flow of 600 m³/s means nothing without context — normal for the Juba, exceptional for the Shabelle. So for every hub we pulled the full daily discharge record for 2015–2025 (≈4,000 days per reach) and computed that reach’s own 80th and 95th percentiles. “High” on this board always means high for that specific stretch of river, measured against its own decade of history.
Somalia’s ground-station network is sparse, so weather values are model estimates — excellent for patterns and trends, but a specific field’s rainfall can differ from the grid average.
High modelled flow means statistically unusual water volumes. Whether a bank actually breaks depends on embankments, siltation and upstream breaches — things no global model sees. Treat the flag as a reason for vigilance, and follow SWALIM flood advisories.
Planting windows are compiled at zone level from FAO and FSNAU calendars. Soil, seed variety and local micro-climate can shift the right date on any given farm — which is why the board hedges rather than commands.
This public board is in English for partners and visitors. Farmers receive the operational advisory in Somali — by USSD, SMS and voice on basic phones — through the M-Tacab platform itself.
This board is the public face of the advisory M-Tacab runs for 243,824 subscribers in Somali — localised, season-aware and delivered over USSD, SMS and voice.