New bill proposes to ban public NWS forecasts & data

"One of the most important and contentious struggles, mentioned here last spring, appears to be turning out in a way that will burnish the Bush administration's pro-tech record. This is the "fair weather" controversy. The question at its core is whether the National Weather Service, which uses taxpayer funds to collect nearly all weather readings, will be allowed to make its information available through the Internet--or instead required to sluice it all to commercial weather services, as the SEC once did with Mead.

The famous Circular A-130 argued strongly for Internet distribution, as did a special study of the question by the National Research Council in 2003. The weather service went ahead with such sites--and they have proved enormously popular. During the three months last fall when four hurricanes struck the South, weather service sites received nine billion hits--breaking a government record of six billion hits on NASA sites in the three months after the Mars rover landing last spring.

From an interest in aviation, I often visit the weather service's marvelous Aviation Digital Data Web. Without a doubt, it has saved many lives by making it easy for pilots to understand where the dangers from icing, thunderstorms and turbulence are. Last fall, the government invited public comment on the weather service's new strategy and received overwhelming support. Just after the election, the service announced that it would officially embrace an open-information policy.

But the Commercial Weather Services Association, the industry's trade group, has complained that such sites violate an agreement from the pre-Internet era. By its argument, the taxpayers should continue to pay for all the weather balloons and monitoring stations--but should not be allowed to get the results directly from government sites.

"We feel that they spend a lot of their funding and attention on duplicating products and services that already exist in the private sector," Barry Lee Myers, executive vice president of AccuWeather, says of the weather service. "And they are not spending the kind of time and effort that is needed on catastrophic issues that involve lives and property, which I think is really their true function."

He added that the weather service might have done a better, faster job of warning about the southern Asian tsunami if it had not been distracted in this way. Sen. Rick Santorum, Republican of Pennsylvania, where AccuWeather is based, has supported the industry group's position. A spokesman said Santorum would introduce legislation to "help" the weather service "continue providing meteorological infrastructure, forecasts and warnings, rather than providing services already effectively provided by the private sector." In other words, taking down those Web sites that the stealth High-Tech Administration has helped create. "

http://news.com.com/Is+President+Bush+good..._3-5546604.html
 
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"We feel that they spend a lot of their funding and attention on duplicating products and services that already exist in the private sector," Barry Lee Myers, executive vice president of AccuWeather, says of the weather service. "And they are not spending the kind of time and effort that is needed on catastrophic issues that involve lives and property, which I think is really their true function."



BOYCOTT ACCU WEATHER. I know several people today that have cancelled all subscriptions with them and have written letters to them. Let them know WHY you are pulling your money from them.
 
The fact that nobody has mentioned the title of this thread is completely false amazes me... NWS continue to issue warnings and public forecasts is the FIRST PARAGRAPH in the bill! There's no proposal to remove that aspect of NWS.
 
He added that the weather service might have done a better, faster job of warning about the southern Asian tsunami if it had not been distracted in this way.
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Last time I looked, the National Weather Service doesn't issue tsunami alerts (regardless of the fact that there were no tsunami detection sensors in the Indian Ocean to begin with)!
 
I'm not sure the exact method, but tsunami alerts do come from NOAA and are broadcast via NWS lines.
 
bill

It sounds to me like this bill would kill stuff like the public mesoscale analysis page and much of our access to SPC products.

Ridiculous. Unconscionable. A triumph of privatize-everything ideology over the public good.

This bill MUST NOT PASS.
 
I enjoyed your post Don but must disagree with your thoughts in the above paragraph. I am employed in the private sector firm Meridian Environmental Technology (Grand Forks, ND). We provide various road maintenence forecast products for several states' DoT as well as 511 travel weather. I can assure you that we do not proved NWS "canned" forecasts. Quite the contrary as there are many occasions where our forecasts differ considerably from the various NWSFOs. Different forecasters, different opinions. Quite frankly, I have seen far too many NWS forecasts using straight "canned" model (especially MOS) products without regaurd to the synoptic set-up or local climatology. My local Eastern North Dakota office (FGF) is notorious for this. Is this really a forecast? Where is the value added? I do not want to indulge in an arguement over who produces the better forecasts since the NWS and the private sector have different forecast priorities. I am extremely confident that my firm produces quality forecast products day in and day out. As a matter of fact, our client base is growing.

I have a firm belief that competition is a GOOD thing. The best way to improve your product is to make it superior to another. Products can be reduced to mediocrity without competition. We would still be driving Model A's if Chevy didn't come along. Intel vs AMD, Apple vs IBM... and thank the Lord I do not have to shop at Kmart. There is probably more room for cooperation between the private sector and NWS, particularly in the media.
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I think that in blowing off a head of steam, I went too far in criticizing all private weather companies. I didn't want to target specific entities, and wound up targeting everyone instead, and should have noted that there are many good companies out there that do not try to stifle competition, but instead beat it by providing superior products. I just get really frustrated by people who pretend the weather service is paid millions to sit on their butts 24/7. It certainly has its flaws, as does any institution, and the public service system tends to encourage too much moss on the stone, but the weather service is a vital component of public safety that provides many services besides the occasional watch/warning, and to pretend that it does nothing else of value (as have some proponents of this bill) is disingenuous at best.
 
It is true the bill designed to make the NWS concentrate more of warnings and step away from competiting things. Okay so lets be clear, this is a threat to free publically avaliable radar. This bill is so vague the whole network could be off-limits. This bill still sits in committee, and it is yet to be seen whether there will be much support for it, lots of bills die in committee. I can almost gurantee you that if this bill did pass that it will be amended several times. This isn't about free enterprise, it's about our government providing a service for its citizens. This is another step in a trend of making our tax-payer funded instutions serve the commercial industry.

Sorry, I think this is a stupid stupid bill.
Scott.
 
I'm not sure the exact method, but tsunami alerts do come from NOAA and are broadcast via NWS lines.
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I kinda knew the first part, but never knew the second. Thanks rdale.

Ofcourse, the point made by the article was that the National Weather Service was too bogged down with forecasting 'sunny skies' and if it had not been, it could have gotten the word out about the December 26th, 2004 East Asian Tsunami sooner.

According to countless TV documentaries and the like about the disaster, NOAA had no tsunami sensors in that area of the world, and they had no clue a giant tsunami had been produced until a period of time after it made landfall along Indonesia.

Of course, I'm more into the weather than into earthquakes and tsunamis :).
 
"It sounds to me like this bill would kill stuff like the public mesoscale analysis page and much of our access to SPC products."

No it isn't. The SPC mesoscale page is created to help the NWS issue warnings, and as such free access is required.

"Okay so lets be clear, this is a threat to free publically avaliable radar."

Absolutely not. You may lose the topographical maps and pretty images available, but the raw data will still be available for the same reason the SPC page will always be available.

"This is another step in a trend of making our tax-payer funded instutions serve the commercial industry."

No, it's a step towards drawing a line on the NWS sneaking into the commercial weather industry.

"the point made by the article was that the National Weather Service was too bogged down with forecasting 'sunny skies' "

Everyone agrees that conclusion was ridiculous, but that's not quite what the bill is addressing.

- Rob
 
"It sounds to me like this bill would kill stuff like the public mesoscale analysis page and much of our access to SPC products."

No it isn't. The SPC mesoscale page is created to help the NWS issue warnings, and as such free access is required.

"Okay so lets be clear, this is a threat to free publically avaliable radar."

Absolutely not. You may lose the topographical maps and pretty images available, but the raw data will still be available for the same reason the SPC page will always be available.

"This is another step in a trend of making our tax-payer funded instutions serve the commercial industry."

No, it's a step towards drawing a line on the NWS sneaking into the commercial weather industry.

"the point made by the article was that the National Weather Service was too bogged down with forecasting 'sunny skies' "

Everyone agrees that conclusion was ridiculous, but that's not quite what the bill is addressing.

- Rob
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Robert

People who work at Accu have said "off the record" that Joel wants to obliverate the NWS. I just can't find any room in my heart to support a company like that.

I realize that there are good companies out there that are putting our some good data - and I subscribe to many of them - but I can't support a company that is trying to bring harm to the NWS. I believe that is what Accu intends to do.

I don't know how you feel about that or them...but I just wanted to add that.

I think it is great that we have private weather companies that are making advances left and right. I am all for that. I don't see the NWS as being a real threat to them. Accu Weather would be better off improving their forecasting and how they get the information out there instead of trying to bite the hand that feeds them.
 
My question is who will be responsible for the maintenance and upgrades on the RADAR site and equipment that the NWS currently uses? The public tax dollars cover a big portion now. You will not see any tax decline if another private company takes them over because I am sure they will ask for government funding.
 
No, it's a step towards drawing a line on the NWS sneaking into the commercial weather industry.
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There is no step here. This would remove the NWS from doing any service which is a duplicate of a commercial industry. Take note of the vague language this gives a lot of latitude for exactly 'what' is to not be made avaliable. In regards to doppler access, actually if you read the bill it would define that the free public access to NWS would be against the policy if other companies were providing radar access.

The NWS is not perfect and maybe there is a little un-necessary overlap in areas where other commercial providers can compete. But certainly this is not reason for removing so much of a public asset and tool. This isn't about pretty pictures , its about regional around the clock weather anaylses and forecasts that the public relies on. In fact we don't even know how far and what products this would involve. Though, it seems pretty obvious that this is not a public service. I know there are some good commercial weather services out there and I think that is wonderful. But it's not true to think that its the NWS who's holding them back. The fact of the matter is people don't really want to pay for weather forecasts. Not even for pretty ones. :)

-Scott.
 
forecasts

I can see them being forced to move the mesoscale page and some of the SPC products to an internal NOAA server to avoid "competition" with the private companies. That would be a disaster for people like me, who are not professional meterologists, but who rely on NOAA/NWS/SPC data to learn about the weather and get a more detailed look at what is going on than you can get from The Weather Channel or local TV.
 
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