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.
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.