The Future of Free Weather Data on the Internet

An anonymous reader writes "The National Weather Service wants to update a 1991 policy that limits what data it can put on the Internet. The proposed new policy makes putting free data on the Internet official. The Private Weather Sector wants NWS to provide its new digital forecasts only in specialized data formats and would like NWS to shut down new XML data feeds. Barry Myers (MS Word doc), president of Accuweather wants you to have pay before using Kweather and other similar tools. Myers is asking friends to comment against the new NWS policy by June 30. Should we have to pay twice to get weather forecasts?"

Comments

Do your own Weather forcast...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why use web based Weather feeds when you can pick the data off the satellite's directly???

Connect a 137-138MHz FM communications receiver or scanner to your soundcard and get colour images directly from overhead weather satellites. You can either build your own like I did or just buy a receiver.

For an explanation try:
http://www.emgola.cz/www_fa/meteosat_englisc h_how. html

and for a great tool: http://www.wxtoimg.com

Australia went down this path.... OS won :-)

[B747SP]

The Austraian Bureau of Meteorology had this little dilemma with it's Weather RADAR product several years ago. They apparently had a very small number (as in less than 20) of customers who paid rather a lot of money for access to the service. Someone wised up and figured out that the cost of collecting the money from such a small customer base wasn't cost effective, so they opened the product to all and sundry.

It's a really really useful tool. I use it at least a couple of times a week - basically anytime the weather seems a bit sus and I need to decide if to do a bolt from the office on my bike before a storm front hits, or to wait until it passes. The last four images thing lets you get a feel for which way the weather is blowing, etc, etc.

On Tuesday nights, when the Sydney Knights do their Tuesday Night Ride (TNR), we're all hitting the bom.gov.au site to see what the weather is looking like. If you ride a motorcycle and live in Sydney, Australia then you need to come on a TNR!.

Now Australia didn't seem to have the problem with the commercial weather services wanting to continue to charge customers for something that they already paid the government for... that's a whole new ball game. Still, I'm all for the gummint opening up public access to weather data in any jurisdiction - it's a really really really good thing. Let the snake oil sellers find a new flavour of snake oil - I've heard that the penis enlargement pill market is a good one.

Re:Stop setting up strawmen.

[Minstrel Boy]

Darned formatting.

http://www.1900storm.com

It's not a straw man argument. That was the greatest natural disaster (loss of life) in US history, and a significant contributing factor was that the fledgling US Weather Service didn't want to listen to the Cuban weather reports. Privatized weather companies may or may not be more willing to work and play together, but they certainly haven't shown the willingness to invest in the necessary infrastructure. Plus, in many countries private weather companies may *not* be able to cooperate, by government fiat.

Less government is generally better, but national infrastructure like weather services are a notable exception.

KeS

This "Business Model" Already Exist

[aroobie]

We pay for the IRS but can't do business with it on the Internet without paying a third party. This letter is simply wanting the same setup for weather companies that already exist for tax software companies. Just as a side note, I work with a good bit of weather software and I can assure you that the only data we get for free, from any source, are radar images that our doppler radar provides. Since all commercial users (I know of) already pay, this sounds like Accuweather wants individual user's cash. I have seen demos of all the major commercial weather software withiin the last 3 months (looking to upgrade our current software) including Accuweather and this may be a last ditch effort for Accuweather. Other weather software companies are showing advanced modeling, data presentation, and other features as the sellling point not what they can charge for the raw data. At least two other weather software companies did not even care where you got the raw data. I have seen one that actually used the xml data from NWS and used the no data charge as a selling point.

I agree with others here, i.e. Personal use of NWS data have already been paid for and should not fall into the IRS/3rd party software business model.