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On Tue, 31 May 2005 09:39:32 -0400, thunder
wrote: On Tue, 31 May 2005 12:24:11 +0000, Shortwave Sportfishing wrote: 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. First, I don't consider it a rant, and I'm quite interested in your take on this. I'm a little confused here. I've always thought that the private weather services generally did use NWS data for their forecasts. Correct? Yes - that is correct. All the pretty graphics you see on TV and on The Weather Channel are all based on NWS data stream (which was recently updated - I use the data stream, for instance, to build my own weather maps for my own amusement). What does this bill propose to change? Is it just for eliminating the lag time? What the Weather Channel and AccuWeather say this is about is that they are in competition with the NWS. They claim that the NWS cannot, by it's very charter, enter into competition with private concerns unless the NWS can provide a service that is not currently available to the public - which is true. Currently, TWC and AW cannot issue their own severe weather statements because that is the purview of NWS. What the Commercial Weather Services Association wants to do is have a universal simultaneous release of all data so they can get into the business themselves. It seems, at first glance, to be a pretty simple and fairly reasonable request. The problem is that severe weather, and all the implications of the consequences of same, are done by consensus. For example, if the Storm Prediction Center in Normam, OK sees a situation building in Alabama, for example, they will consult with the local NWS office and come to a consensus as to the potential for severe weather, the type of weather predicted, the timing of the weather event and just how severe the weather forecast should be. That all takes time. This bill would essentially say that NSWC has to release it's data to AW and TWC and the public at the same time while still in discussions with it's own offices/centers - the data has to be made available so that more than just one interpretation, the NWS's, is available. I know it's a technical sounding issue, but it leads to a couple of different scenarios. The most drastic is competing severe weather warnings. The second is the impact to business and insurance interests which rely on objective weather impact data. Agricultural interests/forecasts, so on and so on. Business interests pay big dollars for forecasting, including six to eight month prognostications - in particular commodity brokers have great interest in weather data, so the immediacy of weather data is paramount in making or losing money. You can see how the bill would impact private forecasting. There are also implications for future intrusion by privatizing the NWS leaving the government with just the military meteorologists and information which by it's very nature, is secret. Personally, I don't much like the sound of this bill. It seems to leave too much to the discretion of the Secretary of Commerce, among other things. Well, that's a good point, but it hasn't been all that different through the years. What concerns me is taking the NWS private which is a distinct possibility. In either case, I don't like it and I've made my opinion known. Again, sorry for the length. Later, Tom |
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