The NWS does a very good job of over all weather forcasting and has the database to provide trends and the facilties to do major research. They also do a very good job of local level warnings. Which they should do.
What they do not do (and this is where several small private companies excel) is get targeted weather information out to other private companies. County Electric Cooperatives are a case. Yes, they have access to all the NWS info we do. However, they don't have (or most cases don't have) someone trained to go and fetch all the information and turn it around in viable form specialized for an electric companies needs. Steps in Company X who tells County Electric that for a fee, we will provide you with daily and hourly forecasts targeted with the information you want and we'll do it on time at the times you want. To make it better, we'll install equipment at your critical sites and beam that information back to you every 15 minutes. NWS will give you the regional outlook. METAR will give you hourly at their stations. How many regular folks (not weather weenies) do you that can read a METAR?
Now, lets say this has been in place for sometime. Company X has a nice contract getting the information to County Electric. Here comes NWS again, with a bunch of new sensors who primary purpose is to enhance the warning time for severe weather. Ok, that's all well and good. But.... as a by-product of the sensors, the same information that Company X provides for a cost, NWS now provides free of charge and available to anyone with a computer. All they have to do is assimilate the dats into the form they want. They now have a Computer Guru on staff to take care of their office network and he finds a little program to do all this. He finds most of the coding for this little program available on some obscure NOAA website and now save County Electric X amount per month, and denying Company X that same amount. NOAA has just "duplicated" an existing network of sensors that are most likley of the same quality and provide 90% of the sensor data they want and shut down Company X in the process.
On the UPS/DHL issue. I don't see the canary yellow or the Big Brown out delivering daily small letter mail. Yes, USPS offers Overnight Services for packages. They don't do it near as well as UPS and DHL.
The whole thing is a two sided coin folks. Both side are right to a degree. Both sides could benefit from some cooperation. In reality, is Baron really threatened by NWS? Not right now. Not in the near future.. WxWorx is a unique data plan and others out there are also giving it a whirl. I can do it chaeper than they can, but in some areas I'm crippled, in other areas I get better data. As long as the NOAA Servers continue to bog down during Severe Weather events, I doubt there will be a big issue.
Not having dealth with Accu-Weather (at least not that I know of) I can't say. They employ (or should) Meteorologists much the same as TV weather and NOAA. If he's producing a poor quality product, then his competitors will eventually win out. Blaming the governemnt is not his answer but is a sure fire way to keep him in business for at least a while. NOAA being "Brought Down" by Private Sector? In his dreams. When was the last time you heard of a major governement agency being brought down by anything? Moved, renamed, or split into different agencies, but totally wiped out?
Data will flow folks. One way or another. I don't believe we'll loose radar services, nor even NWS forecasting services. Too many people rely on them right now. Specialized Weather Data Services will be around for sometime to come. It really all depends on the consumer and end users of the product.
I've played Devils Advocate enough for one day!
