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Wasn't it a Republican who wanted to disband the NWS and turn over the reigns to Accuweather?
This is a terrible idea, I don't want someone from another state trying to give me up to date forecasts when severe weather is around.
Maybe they're saving up "our" money to build a first class weather center in the Middle East, since we've already spent so much money over there.
It would surprise me if private industry can take over weather prediction since the big problem is data acquisition. My bet is that all of those online weather sites merely restate NOAA/NWS reports.
As an aside, I really don't trust private sites much since they, like 99% of the internet, are merely advertisement conduits and as a result will tend to dramatize weather.
For that matter, who does CONUS weather for the military?
My area has a local weather station that runs forecasts all day every day. Sometimes the weather guy from the local news comes on to talk about current weather phenomena, such as the hurricane that's just landed on the gulf coast. Sometimes they talk about the national weather patterns such as the low pressure on the west coast that kept pumping rain into Texas. We were continually well advised as to the weather. Government can keep its hands out of it.
Considering the successes of this government for the past 20 to 30 years, I willing to stick with the Farmer's Almanac.
My area has a local weather station that runs forecasts all day every day. Sometimes the weather guy from the local news comes on to talk about current weather phenomena, such as the hurricane that's just landed on the gulf coast. Sometimes they talk about the national weather patterns such as the low pressure on the west coast that kept pumping rain into Texas. We were continually well advised as to the weather. Government can keep its hands out of it.
Considering the successes of this government for the past 20 to 30 years, I willing to stick with the Farmer's Almanac.
Where do you think your local news station gets it's information from?
I don't think we want to use the Farmers Almanac for prediction of violent weather as was the case in TX and GA.
Rick Santorum tried something like this once (back in 2005...what else happened weather-wise in 2005?). His bill was dead on arrival, as everyone from emergency managers to unions to police officers to weather spotters were absolutely livid. The difference is that while Santorum wanted to essentially gut key parts of the NWS, this bill would "consolidate" services.
I will admit that when I first saw the news about this bill, I was furious. I was thinking, "Do these senators not understand what the NWS actually does? They do a lot more than issue warnings!" However, after reading the article and the bill, I'm more concerned than angry. I'm thinking that these senators essentially see the NWS as "a bunch of guys who sit around a computer and issue warnings and half-wrong forecasts." No, that's like saying NASA's only job is to launch rockets into space.
The NWS is one of those agencies that I don't want to see privatized or tampered with all that much. I can get radar feeds, satellite views, weather products, and more from them all for free; it is a valuable public service. Plus, a lot of the commercial weather interests and media rely in part or in full on NWS and NOAA data, even if they don't publicly admit it. A lot of federal agencies need to be trimmed down, but the NWS isn't one of them in my opinion. They've built and currently operate a crazy amount of weather-related infrastructure that pump out raw data for anyone to use free of charge. My fear is that this benign bill will only open the door to further NWS cuts.
Rick Santorum's proposal failed because he was essentially hacking off large chunks of the NWS to the private sector from the get-go. This bill acts as a means for these kinds of senators to "test the waters", if this bill passes and everything is dandy, who's to say that the next bill won't lead to the closure of local weather forecast offices or NWS privatization?
No country on Earth has a privatized weather service or a forecasting apparatus that is completely in the hands of the private sector. Few are as visible as the NWS, but they're all there.
Finally, this passage from the WaPo article rubs me the wrong way:
Quote:
Although the measure mandates centralizing forecasting operations at six regional offices, it would not result in closure of any of the existing 122 forecast offices. Rather, it specifies that these offices maintain a warning coordination meteorologist to serve as a liaison with emergency management for storm preparedness and response activities as well as to conduct media and public outreach. Offices also would continue to maintain radar instrumentation and launch weather balloons.
I'm not too keen on centralized forecasting. The U.S. is made up of dozens of microclimates, each of which affect local weather based on local conditions, elevation, and prevailing wind patterns. I have a bad feeling that centralized forecasting operations will result in bad data because Central Forecast Office A's forecasters won't take into account the microclimate in Far-Flung-City C, resulting in poorer forecasts.
Besides, we already have a centralized forecasting unit that pumps out forecasts, the NWS's Weather Prediction Center, or WPC. Under the current setup, the WPC pumps out national forecasts, but the meteorologist-in-charge (MIC) at the local WFO can tweak the forecast to suit local climatological and mesoscale conditions. This bill would essentially take that ability away from the WFO, while partially decentralizing the WPC.
Where do you think your local news station gets it's information from?
I don't think we want to use the Farmers Almanac for prediction of violent weather as was the case in TX and GA.
Uhhhhhhh, is that a trick question? Can I have multiple choice? Would it be any one random of six bureaus? I thought it all came from the cable's weather channel.
I kinda miss the crazy hurricane guy from the federal bureau in New Orleans
We have Accuweather out of Penn State and local meteorologists so we don't even need to ever check the Weather Channel unless its to gawk at storm damage around the country. I'm not going to want to give up top tier weather forecasts for government ones being forced on me.
It would surprise me if private industry can take over weather prediction since the big problem is data acquisition. My bet is that all of those online weather sites merely restate NOAA/NWS reports.
But a few private concerns, such as wunderground.com, download data from thousands of private weather stations in the United States and from countries all over the world.
I'm part of the weather underground and have a monitoring site up at my house the feeds data to the wundermap for real time display as part of over 100,000 of others around the nation. I paid for my own station install and it's upkeep not including the 24/7 connection.
I agree with making a NOAA more efficient but not turning it private. The problem is and always has been accountability at the government employee level.
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