NOAA Weather Reports

[kach22i]

FYI: Boaters beware,

http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/showthread.php?t=9681

...courtesty of Yachting magazine...

Good weather information has saved many a boater from wet passages and indisposed passengers, but it is much more than that —nothing less than a matter of life and death. Fortunately, the United Stales has the best public-access weather information system in the world, thanks to the National Weather Service and its parent, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, better known as NOAA.

Unfortunately that fact seems to be lost on U.S. Senator Rick Santorum (R., Pennsylvania, who has introduced a bill to put a stop to your tax-paid buoy, satellite, ground station and meteorologist information stream—saying, in essence, to boaters: drop dead

Oh, and in case you’re wondering why a U.S. Senator would want to wreck a jewel of a system like NOAA, just follow the money. His bill would seem to benefit only Pennsylvania-based AccuWeather, a major contributor to the Senator’s PAC and re-election campaign

Is there another side to this story? Let's hear it, looks like bad news for the boating public to me.

[RoninLB]

I believe NOAA has some kind of monopoly on weather that others want to compete in. A big business mag metioned this recently.

[kach22i]

Originally posted by RoninLB
I believe NOAA has some kind of monopoly on weather that others want to compete in. A big business mag metioned this recently.

http://www.weather.gov/partnershippolicy/clarification-1/

Proposed clarification: Accordingly, NOAA proposes to change Section 4 to read as follows:

4. The nation benefits from government information disseminated both by Federal agencies and by diverse nonfederal parties, including commercial and not-for-profit entities. NOAA recognizes the government best serves the public interest by cooperating with private sector and academic and research entities to meet the varied needs of specific individuals, organizations, and economic entities. NOAA will take advantage of existing capabilities and services of commercial and academic sectors to avoid duplication and competition in areas not related to the NOAA mission. NOAA will give due consideration to these abilities and consider the effects of its decisions on the activities of these entities, in accordance with its responsibilities as an agency of the U.S. Government, to serve the public interest and advance the nation's environmental information enterprise as a whole.

For ease of comparison the present Section 4 reads as follows:

4. NOAA recognizes the public interest is served by the ability of private sector entities and the academic and research community to provide diverse services to meet the varied needs of specific individuals, organizations, and economic entities. The nation benefits from government information disseminated both by Federal agencies and by diverse nonfederal parties, including commercial and not-for-profit entities. NOAA will give due consideration to these abilities, and consider the effects of its decisions on the activities of these entities, in accordance with its responsibilities as an agency of the U.S. Government, to serve the public interest and advance the nation's environmental information enterprise as a whole.

[RoninLB]

I found the mid Oct article. This is all I have. I don't know of any congressional result.


"Fact and Comment
Steve Forbes, 10.17.05, 12:00 AM ET

Hurricane "Grasping Government"

The prominence that hurricanes Katrina and Rita have given the National Weather Service will prompt this agency to continue its insidious assault on the country's commercial weather industry. The prime mission of the NWS is to give warning of tornadoes, hurricanes and other weather hazards. The service is also supposed to provide basic forecasts to the public, as well as essential marine and aviation forecasts. The private sector has created a variety of commercial weather products that range from specialized forecasts for weather-sensitive businesses, such as resorts and commodities traders, to those consumer-friendly weather maps seen in newspapers and on television.

But a few years ago the NWS decided to compete head-on with such private outfits as AccuWeather, the Weather Channel and WeatherData. At the end of last year the Commerce Department's National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), parent of the NWS, formalized this taxpayer-subsidized attack by repealing its policy of noncompetition and nonduplication with the private sector. This is a classic bureaucratic power grab that should be halted. It's the equivalent of the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics deciding to formally compete with Wall Street firms and other private entities that do economic analyses and research, or of the U.S. Postal Service using government money to drive UPS and FedEx out of business.

Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) has proposed legislation that would force the NWS to get back to its basic purpose--producing warnings of tornadoes, tsunamis and the like.

Contrary to NWS propaganda, private-sector weather companies don't simply take the government's data and repackage it. As the head of WeatherData, Mike Smith, puts it, "We create original content because our clients demand it. For instance, we assist Toyota's logistics department in managing their world-famous, just-in-time inventory system around snow and ice storms. We help BNSF Railway prevent accidents by precisely informing them in sufficient time to take precautionary measures where a tornado or flash flood will occur along their right-of-way."

The public gets most of its weather forecasts from commercial providers, including the Weather Channel. Joel Myers, founder of what has become the world's best-known commercial weather service, AccuWeather, pioneered ready-for-air color weather graphics for TV stations and print-ready weather pages for newspapers.

Several years ago Canada's government weather service took a similar course and went into direct competition with the private sector. Once the government achieved a monopoly, the price of its raw data went up--just what you'd expect from a monopolist. To its credit, however, the Canadian government recently has reversed itself. The government service has returned to its core mission of providing raw data, such as warning of hurricanes and tornadoes, and leaves the more specialized work for specific industries and companies to the private sector.

It's not as if the National Weather Service has been a model of efficiency. At least two of its six tsunami-sensing buoys stationed in the Pacific Ocean were out of service on the day the notorious Indian Ocean tsunami erupted last December. The NWS' Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, in fact, was unmanned at the time. Granted, there was little the NWS could have done to prevent the loss of life caused by that wave, but had a similar tsunami erupted farther west, we would not have been fully prepared either.

Another example of the NWS' ineffectiveness took place during the 2004 hurricane season. As Senator Santorum ruefully observed, "As Hurricane Charley hit southern Florida, the United States' most sophisticated research aircraft for collecting data on hurricanes, two P-3 Orions, were nowhere near the eye of the storm. Instead they were studying monsoon effects in Mexico and air pollution in New Hampshire. Had the hurricane-hunter planes studied the path of the storm, NWS could have helped to prevent the upheaval of many Floridians from their homes and assisted the millions of Floridians impacted by the uncertainty of the path of a dangerous and deadly hurricane."

The Santorum bill deserves prompt passage. "

[911ctS]

And that was one of the only things I proudly gave my tax $$ to.

Here on the west coast our buoys have been dropping like flies, not to be fixed. Especially near Morro Bay (first or second most dangerous harbor in the western hemi). Being an avid boater/fisherman I'd like to see something happen to make that info available to the public again, preferably for free! Its simply a safety disaster in the making right now. The info from the buoys is very important to know first hand if your going out on the ocean. It's really too bad it has come to a battle over money.

[RoninLB]

I can't comment on what's the best routine. I'll just follow what the commercial and sport groups do.

I do know that the politics of fishing regulations has done a lousy job in the end result.

[kach22i]

Originally posted by RoninLB
"Fact and Comment
Steve Forbes, 10.17.05, 12:00 AM ET
.........But a few years ago the NWS decided to compete head-on with such private outfits as AccuWeather, the Weather Channel and WeatherData.......
Contrary to NWS propaganda

Propaganda? Yea, I see propaganda alright.

Try this (true source not opinion).

http://www.weather.gov/partnershippolicy/clarification-1/

The present standard of NOAA conduct is contained in Section 4 of the policy which states that NOAA will give "due consideration" to the abilities of the private sector and academic communities to provide diverse services and act in the public interest when making decisions regarding NOAA information services. NOAA proposes clarifying Section 4 to state that NOAA will "take advantage of existing capabilities and services of commercial and academic sectors to avoid duplication and competition in areas not related to the NOAA mission."

avoid duplication and competition in areas not related to the NOAA mission.

So what is the NOAA mission? Why are some of the buoys not working? Underfunding? Neglect? Who's fault is that?

Click below to read the full mission.

http://www.noaa.gov/about-noaa.html

NOAA’s Mission
“To understand and predict changes in the Earth’s environment and conserve and manage coastal and marine resources to meet our nation’s economic, social and environmental needs”

[billyboy]

I do know that the politics of fishing regulations has done a lousy job in the end result.

The end result is that the American fleet has been decimated. No argument that there has been some over-fishing that has occurred in the past. The U.S. fleet is the most heavily regulated in the world. The Gov't tells : 1. When to fish, 2. Where and where not to fish, 3. What type of gear to use. 4 The exact amount of each type of fish you may posses. 5. Who can fish,( there is a strictly limited number of licenses. The only way to get one is to buy one from another holder. No new licenses are available in the majority of fisheries. In California, there are less than 50% of the number of fishers that there were 15 years ago. Fishing is constantly blamed for all the ocean's woes, because the fishing industry is highly visible and poorly organized for it's own defense. The environmental industry is a highly organized money making business that thrives on the propagation of disinformation to stir people's emotions thus prompting the donation of huge amounts of money into their coffers. The media buys into the program since they need constantly exciting headlines. But back to weather reports, try this link:https://www.fnmoc.navy.mil/PUBLIC/ it is much more accurate than NWS. I think that NWS has lately been erring(always) on the side of caution. They are constantly early with their high wind and seas predictions before the fact and late to remove them after the bad conditions have subsided. This was caused by some lawsuits that were brought in the wake of some marine tragedies on the east coast.