Apparently, the likes of Accuweather and other commercial weather service providers have lobbied Congress to limit the amount of data that the National Weather Service makes available to the general public. The bill, if passed, would pretty much wipe out everything the NWS does for the public except for only “life threatening events” like hurricanes and storms.
Santorum made similar arguments April 14 when introducing his bill. He also said expanded federal services threaten the livelihoods of private weather companies.
“It is not an easy prospect for a business to attract advertisers, subscribers or investors when the government is providing similar products and services for free,” Santorum said.
Uhh, well see, that’s the problem. Have these SEEN the Accuweather website? I’m not linking it because the amount of pop up ads and other crap that appear on these stupid sites is absurd! Weather forecasts, whether it about severe weather or not, is an important essential service, and I should be free to choose if I want to see that data with OR without a ton of popup ads and other useless clutter, thanks.
eriously, if you’ve used Accuweather, Weather.com or Intellicast before, give the NWS a try. The forecasts are far superior to anything I’ve seen on commercial ad-driven sites, and there’s no spammy clutter. It’s a shame people actually want this done away with.