Darkening Nat'l Weather Service

The bill, introduced last week by Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., would prohibit federal meteorologists from competing with companies such as AccuWeather and The Weather Channel, which offer their own forecasts through paid services and free ad-supported Web sites.

Supporters say the bill wouldn't hamper the weather service or the National Hurricane Center from alerting the public to hazards — in fact, it exempts forecasts meant to protect "life and property."

"The National Weather Service Web site would have to go away," Bradner said. "What would be permitted under this bill is not clear — it doesn't say. Even including hurricanes."

The decision of what information to remove would be up to Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez — possibly followed, in the event of legal challenges, by a federal judge.

A spokesman for Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said the bill threatens to push the weather service back to a "pre-Internet era" — a questionable move in light of the four hurricanes that struck the state last year. Nelson serves on the Senate Commerce Committee, which has been assigned to consider the bill.

"The weather service proved so instrumental and popular and helpful in the wake of the hurricanes. How can you make an argument that we should pull it off the Net now?" said Nelson's spokesman, Dan McLaughlin. "What are you going to do, charge hurricane victims to go online, or give them a pop-up ad?"

But Barry Myers, AccuWeather's executive vice president, said the bill would improve public safety by making the weather service devote its efforts to hurricanes, tsunamis and other dangers, rather than duplicating products already available from the private sector.

"The National Weather Service has not focused on what its core mission should be, which is protecting other people's lives and property," said Myers, whose company is based in State College, Pa. Instead, he said, "It spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year, every day, producing forecasts of 'warm and sunny.'"

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.

The company has accused the federal agencies of withholding data on hurricanes and other hazards, and failing to ensure that employees don't feed upcoming forecasts to favored investors in farming and energy markets.

The rivalry intensified last year, when NOAA shelved a 1991 policy that had barred the weather agency from offering services that private industry could provide.

Also last year, the weather service began offering much of its raw data on the Internet in an easily digestible format, allowing entrepreneurs and hobbyists to write simple programs to retrieve the information. At the same time, the weather service's own Web pages have become increasingly sophisticated.

Combined, the trends threaten AccuWeather's business of providing detailed weather reports based on an array of government and private data. AccuWeather's 15,000 customers include The Palm Beach Post, which uses the company's hurricane forecast maps on its Web site, PalmBeachPost.com.

NOAA has taken no position on the bill. But Ed Johnson, the weather service's director of strategic planning and policy, said his agency is expanding its online offerings to serve the public.

"If someone claims that our core mission is just warning the public of hazardous conditions, that's really impossible unless we forecast the weather all the time," Johnson said. "You don't just plug in your clock when you want to know what time it is."

Myers argued that nearly all consumers get their weather information for free through commercial providers, including the news media, so there's little reason for the federal agency to duplicate their efforts.

Another supporter of the weather service's efforts, Tallahassee database analyst John Simpson, said the plethora of free data becoming available could eventually fuel a new industry of small and emerging companies that would repackage the information for public consumption. He said a similar explosion occurred in the 1990s, when corporations' federal securities filings became freely available on the Web.

That would prevent weather service employees from favoring some news outlets over others, which Santorum and Myers said has happened in some markets. But it also could end the common practice of giving one-on-one interviews to individual reporters who have questions about storms, droughts or other weather patterns.

Santorum's weather service

Want to get a quick, accurate, and very detailed weather forecast for free, without annoying ads or commercials? Go to the Web site for the National Weather Service -- Pittsburgh.

However, you better check fast, because if Sen. Rick Santorum gets his way, U.S. taxpayers are going to lose access to the data that was collected with their hard-earned tax dollars.

On April 14, Santorum introduced the National Weather Services Duties Act of 2005, which if passed, would bar the National Weather Service from providing any service that competes with the private sector. So even though we pay for the NWS, it would not be able to give us weather forecasts because they are offered by for-pay services such as the Weather Channel and AccuWeather.

I wonder if it is any coincidence that Joel and Barry Myers, founders and high-level executives of AccuWeather, which is headquartered in State College, have given campaign donations to Santorum?

If you believe you should have free and ad-free access to the data your tax dollars pay for, call Sen. Santorum (202-224-6324) to remind him to stand up for taxpayers' rights of free access.

U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum (R., Pa.) has introduced legislation - Senate Bill 786 - that would specifically protect private, for-profit weather-forecasting companies such as State College's AccuWeather from "competition." Who is competing with these companies, you might ask? The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). How? By putting the weather information that it publishes, that each of us pays for with our tax dollars, on the Internet, for free!

Now, I can understand how Weather.com and AccuWeather.com, which charge for their services (which they also sell to television stations, radio stations, newspapers and others) would be upset if another company gave away the same services. I could even understand asking a senator to help out. But let's take a close look at what's going on here.

You see, AccuWeather and its commercial brethren don't have extensive networks of sensors located worldwide. They don't have satellites orbiting and hurricane-hunter crews flying into storms. They don't have supercomputers. What they do have is access to all of this information provided to them by NOAA - for free. That's the information that your tax dollars paid for, and they make a profit reselling it to others. Now they don't want you to be able to get that information from NOAA on its Web site, and Sen. Santorum, champion of free enterprise, is right there with a law to help out.

My suggestion: If NOAA can't make the information that we paid for available to us on the Internet, then the law should also prevent private companies from accessing, using, or reselling NOAA information in their businesses.