A、The foundation. B、The reliability. C、The history. D、The source. B本文改编自早期托福听力考题，难度相对较大。对话由说话人讨论要购买的冬季衣物，引出主要话题——天气预报。可以判断出说话人并

W: We’ d better be looking for sales on down jackets and thermos underwear. It’ s going to be really cold this winter.
M: Well, you didn’t expect it to be warm, did you?
W: Of course not, but I heard the national weather service’s prediction for the next 90 days. They said it’ s supposed to be much colder weather than usual.
M: Yeah, maybe. Personally, I think those long-range forecasts are useless.
W: Not as useless as you think.
M: Oh, come on, when you’ re talking about what’ s going to happen three months later, you might as well just pick a forecast out of our hat.
W: Well, you are partly right.  They area’ t very good at the amount of water falling on the earth. But they are much better for temperatures especially for this time of the year.
M: Really? So I should take them seriously about the cold but not count too much on a lot of extra snow?
W: Exactly.
M: But what did you say about this time of the year? Do some seasons really give them more problems in making forecasts?
W: Autumn is the worst; apparently weather patterns change so much then. Just think how variable our weather has been the last three months.
M: Come to think of it, that’ s true. It probably would have been hard to predict all those chan ges back in the summer. You know, you’ re beginning to convince me there is more to fore casting than I thought. How come you know so much about it?
W: I get my information from an expert--my sister.