Weather Service Becoming More Tech Friendly

awgy writes "The National Weather Service recently began offering XML/RSS feeds of their alerts, observations, and forecasts. Now the Tulsa, OK Forecast Office is experimenting with offering forecast files for Google Earth. It looks like the National Weather Service is quickly becoming one of the most geek-friendly government agencies."

Comments

NWS is nothing but geeks

[Kevinv]

My father worked for the NWS (retired now). The whole department is nothing but geeks. I had to go to his office after school every day. I learned BASIC on a mainframe ("here this'll keep you busy."). I got to use some touch-screen computer that was networked with a bunch of computers at a Michigan college (I don't think it used Arpanet but it may have). I played a graphical MUD type thing that looked like Wizardry eventually would but I could interact with other players. It pretty much rocked.

Tell Santorum what you think about S.786

[rah1420]

Here's what I told him. Here's where I told it to him.

I'm opposed to your introduction of S.786, the "National Weather Service Duties Act of 2005." Why don't you just label it the "AccuWeather Protection Act of 2005" and get it over with?

The National Weather Service provides accurate, up to date gathering of data and presents forecasts of weather at taxpayers' expense. To prohibit them from disseminating this through public access, and constrain them to "data portals designed for volume access by commercial providers" (Section 2(c)(2)) does a grave disservice to the taxpayers of Pennsylvania and the country in general. What you have done is nothing less than ensure that commercial weather reporting agencies have a taxpayer-funded data source that taxpayers are prohibited from enjoying.

Rest assured I will be monitoring the progress of this bill through the Senate and the House.