7 ms·

Well, not if you don't understand how hard accurate weather forecsts are to get, or why a private entity couldn't do better. After all, that's why the news show

Well, not if you don't understand how hard accurate weather forecsts are to get, or why a private entity couldn't do better. After all, that's why the news shows have weathermen, right?! And if the NOAA goes away, the government becomes smaller, and their taxes go down, right? :/ EDIT: Dear downvoters - while this is not my opinion, this is how people think, what people believe. Dismiss it at your own risk.

jschwartzi 6y ago
NWS is an amazing resource for pre-trip planning for a variety of different people. I frequently consult it for weather forecasts prior to hiking. I'm not sure a company like Accuweather could provide me with access to such great forecasts or sensor data as NWS does given how reliant they are on NWS data themselves. The other problem here is that Accuweather charges huge fees for access to their forecasts and I'm not sure that I, as a private citizen, could afford that. So my choices go from pay a little bit of tax to get access to high-quality, reliable weather forecasts and warnings, to being totally unable to get access to this information without paying exorbitant fee. Or alternatively just not knowing these things and having to pay higher insurance costs for my ignorance. This is a really good example of how making government smaller makes a lot of peoples' lives much crappier.
- 2trill2spill 6y ago
  Why would you pay for Accuweather forecasts? You can use their website for free, they just have a bunch of dumb ads. Although I agree I like NWS way more than Accuweather or weather.com, etc, and I would be sad if NWS were forced to take it down.
jfrunyon 6y ago
No. The news shows have weathermen so that they have a presentable face on the data they get from the NWS.
- krapp 6y ago
  Some weather forecasters are just "presentable faces." But some are actual meteorologists who try to put effort into interpreting that data. I used to work at a tv station and the Actual Meteorologists were very particular about not being confused with the "weather people."
  - jfrunyon 6y ago
    Yes, you're right, I over-simplified. Many of them are (or have) meteorologists. To give the data itself a pretty face (interpretation). But that's not the primary reason that news stations hire "weather people". If it was, they would just contract out to some other company.

jschwartzi 6y ago

NWS is an amazing resource for pre-trip planning for a variety of different people. I frequently consult it for weather forecasts prior to hiking. I'm not sure a company like Accuweather could provide me with access to such great forecasts or sensor data as NWS does given how reliant they are on NWS data themselves. The other problem here is that Accuweather charges huge fees for access to their forecasts and I'm not sure that I, as a private citizen, could afford that. So my choices go from pay a little bit of tax to get access to high-quality, reliable weather forecasts and warnings, to being totally unable to get access to this information without paying exorbitant fee. Or alternatively just not knowing these things and having to pay higher insurance costs for my ignorance. This is a really good example of how making government smaller makes a lot of peoples' lives much crappier.

2trill2spill 6y ago
Why would you pay for Accuweather forecasts? You can use their website for free, they just have a bunch of dumb ads. Although I agree I like NWS way more than Accuweather or weather.com, etc, and I would be sad if NWS were forced to take it down.

jfrunyon 6y ago

No. The news shows have weathermen so that they have a presentable face on the data they get from the NWS.

krapp 6y ago
Some weather forecasters are just "presentable faces." But some are actual meteorologists who try to put effort into interpreting that data. I used to work at a tv station and the Actual Meteorologists were very particular about not being confused with the "weather people."
- jfrunyon 6y ago
  Yes, you're right, I over-simplified. Many of them are (or have) meteorologists. To give the data itself a pretty face (interpretation). But that's not the primary reason that news stations hire "weather people". If it was, they would just contract out to some other company.