On Tue, 31 May 2005 07:24:08 -0400, thunder
wrote:

On Tue, 31 May 2005 00:11:34 +0000, Shortwave Sportfishing wrote:


Take the time to read the bill, listen to both sides, then make up your
mind.

Sec. 2 b seems to state that only severe warnings will be issued. I'm
not a lawyer, but that's how I read it.

The text of the bill can be found he

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:S.786:

While you are correct, that has always been the case actually. The
meat of the bill is in 2.c.

Elliot Abrams has been after this for years. His contention is that
the NWS is holding back information to release to the public before it
is released to the private sector. In effect, he is saying that the
NWS is violating the "no compete" clause of NOAA/NWS charter to
provide hydrological and climatological information and data to all
parties involved.

He has a valid argument. The NWS is chartered to protect life and
property by issuing warnings of severe or potentially severe weather
and they do exactly that - issuing the warning first, then
disseminating the information to other concerned parties. In effect
the news agencies and private weather agencies are anywhere from five
to fifteen minutes behind the NWS in providing the same information to
the public.

As an example, I have a pretty extensive weather station here and I
provide real time data to the NWS in Taunton during severe weather
situations in particular during the summer. Being a amateur radio
operator, I also am a observer and I can report to the NWS using
either packet reporting, online data or voice confirmation via
telephone or radio. In a sense, I know what's going on pretty much
before the NWS does, but my point is that the NWS has access to all my
data, and the data of other weather observers in the area, as part of
their data collecting effort. They use this information to develop
threat assessments which they then issue to the public first.

What the bill proposes to address is not limiting the information that
is given to the public by the NWS, but to give equal access to the
information to all concerned parties - the public and private weather
agencies. Which means that they want the data that I privately
provide to the NWS voluntarily - I'm not sure I want to do that. In
particular I spent a lot of money on this over the years and I do it
not only as a hobby, but as a service to the public agency that is
charged with providing data.

My concern is that by giving equal access to the real time information
to everybody at the same time creates a logjam of information and the
very real possibility of misinformation being promulgated by competing
business interests. The possibility that the Weather Channel and
AccuWeather putting out different severe weather forecasts (which by
the way is not all that unusual) for areas far from where they are
located begs for creating a disaster by competition.

The NWS has several local offices at various places around the country
and are staffed with full time meteorologists who are familiar with
local conditions, patterns and information. AccuWeather and the
Weather Channel cannot hope, even with the information, to provide
that kind of local "nuance" with respect to weather.

I'm four square on the side of the NWS on this one - if AccuWeather or
the Weather Channel want the real time data, let them access it as a
cost of doing business - it will help offset the costs of the NWS to
boot. :)

Sorry for the rant.

Later,

Tom