Weather Service Becoming More Tech Friendly

awgy writes "The National Weather Service recently began offering XML/RSS feeds of their alerts, observations, and forecasts. Now the Tulsa, OK Forecast Office is experimenting with offering forecast files for Google Earth. It looks like the National Weather Service is quickly becoming one of the most geek-friendly government agencies."

Impressive

[confusion]

I look forward to the creative uses that are sure to come from this...

Now, if they could just offer real time radar feeds, I'd be happy.

Jerry

The same weather service

[bherman]

Don't forget everyone, this is the same weather service our friends at Accuweather and like minded companys are trying to get to stop their innovation.

I pay for them to gather the weather, why should I have to pay accuweather to give it to me in a more readable format.
I'll let the guys/girls that gathered it in the first place make it purdy!

Don't forget about Santorum's bill

[meridien]

Let's not forget about Santorum's bill that would basically force the NWS to remove all of these advancements so that the paid weather services can make a profit. The taxpayers have already paid for the collection and processing of weather information and his bill would make the availability of the paid-for information in question. Don't just take my word for it, read this [palmbeachpost.com]. Or, just google on "santorum weather bill".

Re:I wonder if their info is superior to AccuWeath

[Alex P Keaton in da]

It is the Army Surplus store business model. Buy things for pennies on the dollar from the US gov't, and then sell it back at a big profit to the people whose taxes paid for the items in the first place.
For those of us who have jobs and don't depend on the gov't for food stamps and welfare, services like the Weather Service and Postal Service are the face of government for many. Not only would packaging the Weather Service data be a better service to the taxpayers who fund it, it would also give one of the faces of gov't a more positive look.

Re:The same weather service

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course the NWS doesn't support the bill. Santorum is the only one who supports it, and that's because he's been bought off by Accuweather (whose corporate offices are in his state).

Re:Poster reveals his youth?

[typical]

Yeah, seriously. I had the same thought. "Becoming?"

They had (have?) a telnet server that dumps out data as well.

I looked into writing a METAR-parsing library at one point.

The US government is pretty good about providing electronic information. Heck, GNU's timezone data was (is?) maintained by some guy at NIST or something. The NWS is one of the better government agencies, too.

Accuweather can go to hell. There is a *huge* functional difference to having information free versus inexpensive. Free means that I can just write an open-source client and include it with GNOME to display the current weather on the desktop. Inexpensive means that I pretty much can't.

If Accuweather can't manage to find a single bloody thing that they can do beyond what the NWS is doing (like, oh, throwing effort into forecasting research and selling forecast data), they definitely should not be in the business.

So Santorum is the guy opposing free weather data, huh? And he's the guy who hates gays?

Damn, I really wish that I still lived in Pennsylvania. There's one vote that sure would have been useful.

Contact your senators

[Bimo_Dude]

I have already written my senators on this matter, and have urged all of my friends (in the US anyway) to do the same. I never heard anything back from the senators, and it's been three months already. With their voting records, they must be too busy kissing up to accuweather to actually read their mail.

The EFF [eff.org] is also asking for help on this one.

*sigh* I can't wait for election day!

Re:Impressive

[whovian]

Now, if they could just offer real time radar feeds, I'd be happy.

Well, depending on where you look for the radar images, getting FREE updates every 5 minutes is pretty damn good. It works well for this armchair weather enthusiast. One alternative might be to pay $7/month for "real time" radar imagery with various enhancements.

I suppose the updates are only at every five minutes because in times of heavy weather, the forecasters need different types of data. The radar sweeps are done using 2 to 4 angles of elevation depending if they want to measure precipitation or storm relative velocities, for example.

NWS == geeks

[Nate B.]

One of the original homes for geeks is the National Weather Service. There's gagetry galore and tons of science. I'm glad the folks at the NWS are taking advantage of newer web technologies.

In fact, the NWS is one of the few government functions I feel is worthy of my tax dollars. This function is too much of a public good to be left in the hands of for profit companies.

Re:Ahh, monopolies...

[Darby]

I'm getting the impression that the higher-modded posts want companies like Accuweather to just "go away".

If by "companies like Accuweather", you mean companies that take freely available information and use it to provide a useful service which some might then choose to pay for, then your impression is all wrong.

If by "companies like Accuweather", you mean companies that use the government to take freely available information away from the public so that only they have access to it while still making the public pay to collect it, and then charge the public again for access which we already paid for, then yes absolutely I want them to go away.

If you can come up with any sane sort of reason that companies that attempt such utterly disgusting actions should be allowed to exist, then I'm all ears.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion