Posted on 08/22/2007 7:05:42 AM PDT by NY.SS-Bar9
As Hurricane Dean roars through the Gulf of Mexico, it reminds everyone how dangerous the weather can be. But it should also remind everyone how poorly the National Hurricane Center has been at predicting storms.
Despite dire predictions from the National Hurricane Center, no hurricanes hit the U.S. last year. This year they are again predicting as many as 10 hurricanes, up to five of them hitting the U.S. Fortunately, Dean also seems most likely to miss us.
All this raises a question: Is the government’s free weather prediction service so bad that it is worth paying for private companies to predict the weather?
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
I don't see NOAA forcing TWC to start lame-assed personality-driven programs such as the two twits on at 8pm and that even lamer weekend talk-show format. TWC did fine as long as it reported hard weather news. But some Clintonista-type hack runs the network now and thinks they can draw viewers by dragging it into liberal nitwit land.
How stupid. Next time there's a major hurricane or tornado outbreak or something, they can all just keep quite and see what happens; whether there's a greater loss of life with no warning than with one.
Idiots.
I swear, Dean could have gone further south, crossed over Central America, re-emerged in the Pacific and regenerated, and Fox and TWC would still be breathlessly speculating about the potential of Dean hitting Padre Island.
Turn it over to NASA with Algore in charge !!!
Problem solved.....sheeesh that was easy to fix.
"moron libs"
"liberal nitwit"
"stupid"
"wreckless"[SIC]
"Idiots"
Gee... I thought I posted on FR, must have hit DU by mistake judging by the intellectual level of these responses.
The thing is, I believe that all the data used by the private companies, is collected by the NWS from radiosondes etc. If we’re going to go to private forecasting, someone is going to have to pick up the expense of maintaining the kind of data collection that the NWS does now.
I could see the battles over who *owns* what data and how it’s distributed. Is one company going to own it all and sell it? Are different companies going to own different sections of the country and share? I could see that working really well when there’s money to be made.
I also don’t see that Accuweather or weatherunderground are really any more precise about our weather than the NWS. I listen to the weather radio constantly and have found that they do a pretty good job of forecasting, and a fine job on alerting and keeping track of severe storms in our area.
What a laugh. Someone is actually complaining that the government is giving something away for free? That's a "problem"?
TWC is not competing with NOAA weather radio. The NWS does not have a television presence. btw--how many private enterprises should be flying into the eye of a hurricane at any given time?
Unfortunately, these aren’t the only problems with the National Weather Service. The service has been accused in the past of withholding government aircraft reconnaissance of hurricanes for up to 11 hours before releasing the information to private companies or the public.
Since when is the government required to release such info to a private company?
I'm reminded of the following paragraph that discussed the difficulties with forecasting the weather:
Imagine a rotating sphere that is 12,800 kilometers (8000 miles) in diameter, has a bumpy surface, is surrounded by a 40-kilometer-deep mixture of different gases whose concentrations vary both spatially and over time, and is heated, along with its surrounding gases, by a nuclear reactor 150 million kilometers (93 million miles) away. Imagine also that this sphere is revolving around the nuclear reactor and that some locations are heated more during one part of the revolution and other locations are heated during another part of the revolution. And imagine that this mixture of gases continually receives inputs from the surface below, generally calmly but sometimes through violent and highly localized injections. Then, imagine that after watching the gaseous mixture, you are expected to predict its state at one location on the sphere one, two, or more days into the future. This is essentially the task encountered day by day by a weather forecaster.
They haven't done it in the past several years--if they ever did it at all. Recon data are virtually real-time these days.
I want to know who we should believe when Accuweather reports a storm will strike both Houston and New York, and TWC reports the same storm will strike Miami and New Orleans.
Absolutely! Radiosondes aren't cheap either... about $100 per launch. There are about 1000 reporting stations world-wide that launch them.
I could see the battles over who *owns* what data and how it’s distributed. Is one company going to own it all and sell it? Are different companies going to own different sections of the country and share? I could see that working really well when there’s money to be made.
I think the WMO (World Meteorological Organization) states how the data is handled and disseminated. Of course, if everything is privatized, then that changes everything.
I also don’t see that Accuweather or weatherunderground are really any more precise about our weather than the NWS. I listen to the weather radio constantly and have found that they do a pretty good job of forecasting, and a fine job on alerting and keeping track of severe storms in our area.
Great point. Reason being is that all forecasting agencies (public and private) end up using the same numerical models which are fed by the same data from surface and radiosonde information.
When has this happened? Everyone initially uses the official forecast from the National Hurricane Center. I have never seen TWC deviate from that. I don't follow Accuweather so I can't comment on their service. I do believe that the on-air forecasters may talk about different scenarios that could alter the projected path of the storm, however, if you read the forecast discussions put out by NHC, they address the same issues. TWC only re-hashes info put out by NWS or NHC.
Accuweather is well know for sensationalizing “what if” scenarios that are ludicrous. Such dramatized “possibilities” increase their viewer share when they include large metro areas which may have, at best, a remote probability of minimal effects.
Bingo! IMHO that makes them no different than most other media outlets.
I can think of one marked improvement: one costs the taxpayers nothing, and the other does.
The NWC budget is chump change in the federal budget. And unlike many parts of the fedgov, the NWC actually delivers something of considerable value for the tax dollars spent.
As Nauti Nurse noted, do you think a private company would arrange to fly aircraft into a Cat 5 hurricane for critical forecast info?
Unlike much of the fedgov, this ain't broken.
Of course they could. Private enterprise can do anything government can do, only cheaper, and often better.It's the same people working in both areas. Being part of a government run business doesn't make them smarter, or more able to come up with good ideas, just less efficient, and on the taxpayers dole.
Freed from constraints, they might come up with way better and even more accurate solutions.
As for it being chump change in the Federal budget, lots of chump change adds up to big money.
Sorry, but I don't see it happening. I don't see a business model where a company will fly into a hurricane to get data. How would they make a profit from that? Can they charge coastal residents for hurricane forecasts? Or do you have them function as subcontractors for the government?
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