Personally, it has helped me greatly. Realizing many people, myself included, may be engaged in activity away from the garden, it is still good(great) to know what is coming, whether you can do something or not to help your garden.

To me, in my short garden history, I know that having this information has probably helped me more than any other piece of info available besides the basics of soil composition.

Take care,
Travis

Awareness of the subsequent 3-4 days weather is helpful but iffy so an eye on the sky never hurts.

Dave

Dave

I also find it useful to have the local radar - http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/radar/index_e.html?id=WHK for my area- bookmarked, so I can check out exactly where the weather systems are around me. Has come in handy many times.

Betsy

The rookies of growing the beast of the garden, the tomato plant, should realize the importance of localized weather and never let it go (or take it for granted).

It is easier to me to do taken that the tomato grows so well, and strong,in comparision to other veggie plants. I know I have always been taken by the strength of it.

Think about all the factors(and options) that play into the scenario, if you took that next step of care and followed closely, the near weather.

It effects BER firstly, followed by ...well it controls everything in my opinion.

I could go on and on

Take care,
Travis

Since my "local" radar tends to miss most of the precipitation in my county (presumably due to mountains being in the way), I use this page:
http://www.wunderground.com/radar/map.asp
to access two nearby "local" radars which include my location. One or the other is almost always better than my own "local" radar. But sometimes the regional radar is the best.

I also like this page from the Weather Channel:
http://www.weather.com/maps/geography/eastcentralus/eastcentraluspreci pforecast_large.html
It's confusing to set up, but gives me a better idea of how much precipitation to expect than the local forecast does. (At least in my part of the world, this not so much a guarantee that there will be precipitation, but more a case of "if it does rain, this is probably how much rain there will be.")

I have three apps on my phone that I use several times a day: two weather apps, one giving the essentials (high & low temps, chance of rain, etc.) and one that tells me how much rain we've had so far, gives weather alerts, hourly forecasts, radar maps, etc. The third is a moon phase app which tells me when the sun will rise & set, moon phases, etc. I always have my phone with me in the garden, where it's also handy for taking photos of bugs I don't recognize.

On my laptop, I have the weather underground set for my latitude and longitude. I love that website, especially for checking to see exactly how much rain I've had during the week so that I know whether to water the garden.

Three times so far this season, I was told that there was a 0% chance of rain for the next few days. So, reluctantly, I went out to water the garden - only to be rained on mid way through watering... I never turn down free rain, but so much for predictions. I had a similar forecast when I went away for a weekend - I chose to delay part of my garlic harvest since they forecast a week of dry weather - the skies dropped a half inch of rain the day I returned. I had to pull everything I had at that point before it got ruined - barely averted disaster there.

I check the weather multiple times a day, and I do feel it's important, but take it with a grain of salt. And like Dave said above - anything beyond 3 days out is basically a coin toss.