I know that aspects of this have been posted previously, but I thought
I would provide an update I saw in today's newspapers and a release by
the Associated Press.

According to several articles in the news, "Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa.,
the U.S. Senate's third-ranking Republican, stirred up a growing storm
with a bill introduced on April 14 that would restrict the availability
of weather information provided now by the National Weather Service for
free to the general public. Among the products removed from public
access would be weather data and radar through the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration's Web sites. Though Santorum claims the NWS
would compete unfairly with such commercial sites as AccuWeather and
the Weather Channel, both for-profit services use basic data provided
by the NWS as well as other information from other sources and
repackage it for target markets."

According to a release by the Associated Press, "Two days before Sen.
Rick Santorum introduced a bill that critics say would restrict the
National Weather Service, his political action committee received a
$2,000 donation from the chief executive of AccuWeather Inc., a leading
provider of weather data."

If you use NOAA weather information to plan sailing events, you might
want to contact the senators from your state.

John

On 30 May 2005 15:16:26 -0700, wrote:

I know that aspects of this have been posted previously, but I thought
I would provide an update I saw in today's newspapers and a release by
the Associated Press.

According to several articles in the news, "Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa.,
the U.S. Senate's third-ranking Republican, stirred up a growing storm
with a bill introduced on April 14 that would restrict the availability
of weather information provided now by the National Weather Service for
free to the general public. Among the products removed from public
access would be weather data and radar through the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration's Web sites. Though Santorum claims the NWS
would compete unfairly with such commercial sites as AccuWeather and
the Weather Channel, both for-profit services use basic data provided
by the NWS as well as other information from other sources and
repackage it for target markets."

According to a release by the Associated Press, "Two days before Sen.
Rick Santorum introduced a bill that critics say would restrict the
National Weather Service, his political action committee received a
$2,000 donation from the chief executive of AccuWeather Inc., a leading
provider of weather data."

If you use NOAA weather information to plan sailing events, you might
want to contact the senators from your state.

http://wwwa.accuweather.com/promotio...e=wxinfoaccess




Later,

Tom
-----------
"Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics that it
can never be fully learnt..."

Izaak Walton "The Compleat Angler", 1653

I prefer to believe the news sources rather than accuweather, which
would stand to gain from any restrictions placed on information
disseminated by NOAA. You can choose to believe a for-profit
competitor, but I don't.

John

On 30 May 2005 16:56:21 -0700, wrote:

I prefer to believe the news sources rather than accuweather, which
would stand to gain from any restrictions placed on information
disseminated by NOAA. You can choose to believe a for-profit
competitor, but I don't.

What I believe in is listening to both sides and developing my opinion
based on all aspects of the issue - not just one.

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

Just for the record, if you go back a few days when this first came
up, I made my opinion known. Go find it.

Later,

Tom

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:

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

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? What does this bill propose to change? Is it just for
eliminating the lag time?

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.

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. :)


********

Precisely.

It's unfair to ask the public to "pay twice" for the same information.
Once through taxes paid to support and operate the NWS, and a second
time through subscriptions and fees paid to private weather services.
Information developed by public tax dollars should be available to the
tax-paying public without enriching some hand-selected companies with
the "correct" political priorities.

Now of course if I could get in on this gig, I'd be all for it. :-)
It would make sense to me that something here in the NW, maybe Mt.
Rainier National Park, should be "privatized". Just like the weather
gig, I'll just take over all the federally funded assets there and even
allow the taxpayers to continue staffing and maintaining the place. In
the interest of "free enterprise", I'll just collect, and keep, all the
quadrupled or quintupled admission fees. The current admission fee
system generates revenue that supposedly helps offset the cost of
maintaining, repairing, and staffing the park. What kind of communist
system is that? All those admission fees should go into the *private*
sector, where the money can be spent effectively, not given to the
government to be wasted.

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

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.


It also sounds like it will shut off a huge amount of incoming raw
weather data, which is gathered by volunteers (as per Tom's earlier post).

Shortwave Sportfishing wrote
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.


No apology necessary. IMHO this is a very interesting and definitely
on-topic discussion.

Fair Skies- Doug King