<![CDATA[This study develops and evaluates a deep learning-based weather prediction model built on BMKG (Indonesian Meteorological, Climatological, and Geophysical Agency) data, with the aim of informing rice planting season optimization in Deli Serdang Regency, North Sumatra, Indonesia. Two recurrent architectures, Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (BiLSTM), were compared for daily rainfall prediction using 788 observations collected between January 2024 and March 2026, split chronologically into training, validation, and testing subsets. The LSTM model achieved a Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of 24.42 mm, a Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of 15.20 mm, and an R² of 0.0420, while the BiLSTM model achieved a lower RMSE of 23.64 mm, a lower MAE of 14.89 mm, and a lower R² of 0.0233. Although BiLSTM produced marginally smaller errors, LSTM explained a slightly larger share of rainfall variability, and both R² values remained close to zero, indicating that neither model captured the full variability of the rainfall series. Because of its higher R², the LSTM-based forecasts were translated into an indicative cropping-calendar classification of wet, normal, and dry months as a preliminary basis for advancing, maintaining, or delaying the onset of the rice planting season in Deli Serdang Regency. Given the limited explanatory power of both models and the absence of baseline forecasts, repeated training, and time-series cross-validation in this study, these planting-season indications should be read as exploratory and complementary to, rather than a replacement for, the operational cropping calendar issued by BMKG and the Ministry of Agriculture. Future research should incorporate longer historical records, additional meteorological predictors, baseline models, and rigorous validation to develop more reliable, data-driven rice planting season decision support for Indonesia.]]>
