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This decision has already been made, in the first week of December.

Not only that, the already-made decision has been covered by slashdot, not once, but twice! (If a duplicate story is "dupe", perhaps an incorrect triplicate story should be referred to, appropriately, as "tripe".)

And the answer is a resounding no, taxpayers will NOT have to "pay twice" for access to weather data.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration this week began providing weather data in an open-access XML format, alleviating concerns that commercial providers would continue to play a dominant role in how weather data gets to the public.

"The public should not have to pay twice for access to basic government information that has been created at taxpayer expense," wrote Ari Schwartz, an associate director of the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology, in a July 28, 2004, essay.

Earlier this year, NOAA made the data available in XML as a test, called the National Digital Forecast Database. After receiving comments from the public and commercial providers, the agency made the decision permanent this week. Now anyone can get information in an XML format directly from the National Digital Forecast Database website.

Full story
slashdot coverage #1
slashdot coverage #2

Of course, this information has always been publicly accessible: it's just a matter of ease. The National Weather Service now makes its weather feeds accessible to anyone in open formats, like XML and RSS. Of course the commercial weather reporting industry is against it: surprise, surprise.

http://www.weather.gov/ isn't good enough? they list all a crap-ton of weather stations, all you need to know is what city you want.

isn't this easier to remember, for US dudes? weather.gov

Raw data is available.

http://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/

http://weather.gov/noaaport/html/noaaport.shtml

Competing predictions are available, generally for a price however.

Example: http://www.saic.com/omega/

http://weather.gov/data/current_obs/seek.php

The URL points to the RSS versions of the XML feeds. These have actually been available for quite some time.

http://weather.gov/xml/ At least a good chunk of it. My project, openWeather aims to fill some gaps that the NWS has in their services. Come and help out.

http://weather.gov/feedback.php

Please everyone, take the time to write out a nice sincere thank you note. Try to stay away from such negativites as "Thanks for not being an just another government agency" and steer more towards "We appreciate your willingness to disseminate this information."

It can never be emphasized enough how utterly valuable a SAME equipped weather radio can be. They do not just allow you to get up to the minute weather reports, but they also act as your first warning of any kind of serious emergency in your area.

Warning sirens are only intended to notify people outdoors, and TVs and radios are only useful if you are awake, the unit is on and you are within earshot and paying attention at the time.

When NOAA or an emergency management agency (NOAA allows them to utilize the system without running the transmissions by them first) sends out a warning message, it is proceeded by what sounds like intermittent static. In fact, the system is sending out a burst of number sequences that are decoded by SAME equipped radios that compare the number sequence to that which the user has previously entered. If they do not match, the radio ignores the message, if they do match however, a generally ear-piercing alarm sounds while the radio interprets the alert code and displays the corresponding text message before the computer voice announcement (or real person if the situation warrants it) from the NOAA station begins to broadcast. The process takes about 10 seconds (this is to give you a chance to get closer to the radio before the voice warning begins).

Here is a complete list of all of the emergency codes

They are not as cheap as a clock radio, but they are worth every penny. I'm still astonished when I come across people who live in tornado-prone areas who don't buy them despite their financial ability to do so and their fear of dangerous weather.

The National Weather Service has quite a few interesting and useful feeds. Including Hurricane Info and Current Observations.

The National Weather Service has quite a few interesting and useful feeds. Including Hurricane Info and Current Observations.

Just type in "city,state" or a ZIP code, and you're good to go.

I used to think Weather.com was the coolest thing since sliced bread. Of course, it took Firefox's popup blocking along with the Adblock extension to make browsing it tolerable.

However, since discovering the following resources, I don't even bother with Weather.com anymore.

http://www.weather.gov/
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/
http://weather.unisys.com/

These sites offer much more in-depth technical information and are not funded by ad revenue.

May I recommend Weather.gov? After all, you are paying for it even if you don't use it, and it is actually better too.

Use this software to download the compressed binary data and save it different formats or create graphics
Beware, though... the datasets are pretty large and normally updated every hour.

Use this software to download the compressed binary data and save it different formats or create graphics
Beware, though... the datasets are pretty large and normally updated every hour.

Use this software to download the compressed binary data and save it different formats or create graphics
Beware, though... the datasets are pretty large and normally updated every hour.

weather.GOV is better than weather.COM anyway