Free Republic

On 9 Aug 2012, the Department of Commerce, for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration by way of the National Weather Service, put out a solicitation for a small variety of ammunition. The solicitation breaks down the requirements: 16,000 rounds of ammunition for semiautomatic pistols to be factory-loaded .40 S&W caliber, 180-grain jacketed hollow point (JHP). 6,000 rounds of frangible, 125-grain CFRHT .40 caliber. 24,000 rounds of ammunition for semiautomatic pistols to be factory-loaded .40 S&W caliber, 180-grain jacketed hollow point (JHP). In all, 40,000 rounds of ammunition, and only 500 Transtar II blue 24″ x 40″ targets are being...

SNIPPET: "WASHINGTON — A US man has been charged after he compiled a hit list of 15 people he believed had harmed Muslim civilians and deserved to die, court documents showed Wednesday. Paul Rockwood and his wife Nadia were charged with lying to federal investigators about the compilation and content of the list, which Nadia Rockwood delivered to an unnamed individual in April at her husband's request." SNIPPET: "According to plea agreement documents obtained by AFP Wednesday, Paul Rockwood converted to Islam around late 2001 and soon "became a strict adherent to the violent jihad-promoting ideology of cleric Anwar al-Awlaki."...

(Please blame National Weather Service for the "all caps".) DUE TO THE UNUSUALLY COOL AND WET CONDITIONS IN JUNE...HERE ARE SOME INTERESTING FACTS TO NOTE: THIS JUNE IS TIED FOR THE 8TH COOLEST ON RECORD. THE AVERAGE TEMPERATURE WAS 67.5...3.7 DEGREES BELOW NORMAL...WHICH ALSO OCCURRED IN 1897. THIS WAS THE COOLEST JUNE SINCE 1958...WHEN THE AVERAGE TEMPERATURE WAS 67.2 DEGREES. BELOW AVERAGE TEMPERATURES OCCURRED ON 23 OUT OF 30 DAYS THIS JUNE...OR 75 PERCENT OF THE MONTH. CENTRAL PARK HAS NOT HIT 90 DEGREES IN THE MONTH OF JUNE THIS YEAR. THE LAST TIME THIS OCCURRED WAS BACK IN 1996....

Associated Press SAN FRANCISCO The National Weather Service warned Sunday that a Northern California storm could cause flooding in portions of the Russian River and Napa River. The service issued flood warnings for the Napa River at St. Helena for late Sunday night or early Monday morning and for the Russian River at Healdsburg for Monday morning. The Napa River at St. Helena had risen to about 8 feet early Sunday afternoon, below the 19-foot flood level, said Jeff Kopps, a hydrologist at the National Weather Service in Monterey. The Russian River at Healdsburg had risen to about 3 feet,...

ATLANTA -- The government is changing how it categorizes tornadoes after finding that it doesn't take 300 mph winds to disintegrate homes and turn cars into missiles _ a 200 mph twister can do just as much damage. The National Weather Service said Thursday it had changed the Fujita Scale, a three-decade-old system of ranking a tornado's strength, to align wind speeds more closely with actual damage. "It was apparent that many of the speeds used in the estimates were too large, said Joe Schaefer, director of the service's Storm Prediction Center. "The scale guiding wind speeds wasn't in tune...

(Washington) -- U.S. Senator Rick Santorum is suggesting that early mistakes in predicting the path of Hurricane Katrina may be a symptom of lost focus at the National Weather Service. Santorum, who introduced legislation earlier this year to curb the output of government weather forecasters, says tracking life-threatening weather must be central to what the agency is doing. 00149_ric09d.mp3 Asked about Katrina by WITF, Santorum described weather service warnings for Florida, where the storm first made landfall, as “not sufficient." Santorum’s bill instructs the government to abandon weather prediction and data reporting efforts that duplicate private-sector activity. He came under...

Last week's performance by the U.S. government National Weather Service in providing data and warnings about Hurricane Claudette raises important questions about National Weather Service priorities and its ability to fulfill its core mission to provide complete and timely data and protect life and property, according to AccuWeather, Inc, the world's leading commercial weather service. The National Weather Service received and utilized critical observations by government aircraft reconnaissance during an 11-hour period the day before Claudette hit Texas, but did not make these observations available to the commercial weather industry, emergency preparedness agencies or the public. The National Weather Service...