Phoenix wrote on Jan 27^th, 2012 at 11:21pm:

I do what old_salt does.  Depending upon where you are in Quetico (and the quality of your radio), you can pick up the FM CBC station in Atikokan or the NPR rebroadcaster in Ely (I believe the Ely station has increased its power recently). WTIP (a community owned and operated station) in Grand Marais also has a transmitter at Gunflint Lake.  As for the quality of the forecasts, well....

I do & have done the same thing for years.  I carry a small Eton radio.  Its tuner is far too touchy & generally I have to string up some wire off of its antenna to get a decent signal.  I'm generally in Quetico vs the BWCA and even there I tend to travel the north & central sections for the most part.  Typically, I can depend on picking up the Atikokan and/or the Ft. Frances CBC stations.  You can catch their full weather report in the mornings & evenings anywhere between five minutes & ten minutes past the hour... if you're lucky.

Of course, it seems like about 80% of the time their full weather report consists of the following maddening words: "Sun & cloud today."

That profound statement just about covers all the possibilites, now, doesn't it?

Every once in awhile you learn something a little more useful about the day's weather but surprisingly seldom.

While waiting on the weather report, however, I HAVE learned to enjoy some of their "colorful" feature stories & news that used to play on their "Great Northwest" program (now re-named to something; the "naming contest" was actually going on while I was in the park).   Anyway, one of my favorite CBC human interest stories involved Max Baer Jr. (ie. Jethro Bodine of Beverly Hillbillies fame) and his efforts to build the new "Clampett Museum" (complete with "see-ment" pond and everything).

At least now most of the programs on CBC are in English.  I remember when they used to run programming in French and then in Ojibwe during certain hours of the day.

I used to carry a Radio Shack radio that got better reception than my small Eton.  It was four times as heavy, however...  making me even more irritable when the "Sun & cloud today" forecast came on.  Somehow "lighter" makes the useless forecast just a little more bearable.

Sun & cloud today, folks.

Jimbo   8-)