Senate bill to make it illegal for NHC to release products

[Windspeed]

Mr. George Allen:

I am deeply concerned with the introduction of Senate Bill 786. The bill proposes to limit the role of the NOAA/NWS/NHC/TPC by disallowing them to release forecast products and make them readily available to the general public. Apparently this is to prevent these federal agencies from competing with meteorological companies in the private sector. Please, Mr. Allen, since you are on the committee that introduced this bill, consider and share the following with your peers:

1) Senator Santorum is being influenced by Accuweather, a privately owned meteorology network located in his own back yard. Accuweather is wanting to pocket money off American tax payers by forcing them to pay for the same information that the National Weather Service already provides at no extra cost. That information, such as forecast and sypnotic extropulation products, should NEVER, I repeat, NEVER be kept from the general public because OUR TAX DOLLARS already pay for these services through the Federal Government.

2) If NOAA/NWS/NHC is no longer allowed to issue 3, 5, and 7 day forecast products, and those products go to privately owned companies like AccuWeather, I want you to try and grasp the significance of how fundamentally wronged the average citizen will be that lives in states that are susceptible to severe weather and landfalling tropical cyclones. Are we now going to force them to pay for important weather products? This would be tragic. Is AccuWeather going to handle warning coordination? If not, when will the ethical switch be turned on to determine when the NWS or NHC can and will be allowed to start issuing products on severe weather? Are we in the business of undermining our scientific agencies? The private sector should not have control of these services.

3) As for the role of the NWS vs. the private sector, are companies like AccuWeather going to be paying for research flights, atmospheric dropsondes, weather balloons, radar stations and mobile units, probes, severe storm labs, aviation metars, not to mention local resource management and representation with national agencies like FEMA. Our tax payer money already provides these! No, AccuWeather can not afford to take on these responsibilities, not to mention the number of professional scientists and meteorologists it takes to work and coordinate all this research. AccuWeather wants to use NOAA research and products to create their own products, then charge their customers for the same data that exists with our tax dollars. This is simply wrong.

4) There are also liability issues: Will AccuWeather take responisibility for their products? The seriousness of this issue can be no further justified than the fact the government is responsible for its agencies and employees. However, now we will have a private company like AccuWeather making money off of information that is gathered by NWS/NOAA's resources. Will AccuWeather be liable when they incorrectly forecast? No, they want no part of issuing advisories and warnings on severe weather concerns. They want the Federal Government to continue handling that SO THEY WILL NOT BE HELD LIABLE. They just want to make money off the "easy stuff." NOAA and NWS has over 60 years of scientific research and the best meteorologists and climatologists in the world. They should NEVER be limited in the role they play. They are one of the big success stories of our government funded and regulated scientific agencies. AccuWeather is not. Who is going to regulate them?

I urge you, Senator Allen, to please do significant research on Bill 786 and help keep our federal scientific agencies like NOAA, USGS, and the Dept. of Interior from being tampered or undervalued by private interest groups.

Best regards,
Matthew Carrier
Student: Geography and Geology Major

[dhweather]

Excellent Matthew!

[hookemfins]

I was stumbling around the wireless section of my local WO and found this: http://www.srh.noaa.gov/SR-10-1.pdf

I think the first line service description says what the NWS responsibility is.

[Derek Ortt]

accusux cannot even make a real tropical cyclone forecast. When they have forecast verification well below the CLIPER model and 10-year averages (final verification to be released within the next couple of weeks), as we did for 2004, then they should be the ones to talk. Until then, they need to put down the crack pipes and spend some money hiring decent mets, instead of allowing them to either go to NWS or to graduate school for more money