Episode 12: Weather Data Should Be Free

[00:00:00] Ed Oswald: In this episode of the Weather Whys Podcast there’s no intro, no frills. I’m your host Ed Oswald, and I want to communicate the seriousness of what’s going on right now. So let’s discuss NOAA.
[00:00:11] As we speak, Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, better known as DOGE, have set their sights on NOAA. The results have been devastating. Ahead of the severe weather season, 11 of 38 National Weather Service offices are now critically understaffed in Tornado Alley. That means that there are not enough employees to staff all services completely.
[00:00:30] The cuts not only affected new employees at NOAA, but recently promoted seasoned veterans, too. In one case, it involved the person responsible for creating the nation’s next generation weather models.
[00:00:41] These moves put lives at risk.
[00:00:44] What’s the reason? That’s the question everybody wants an answer for. But one company in particular has waited for this moment to occur.
[00:00:51] But first, a little background.
[00:00:53] There’s been incredible growth in private sector meteorology over the past 20 years, and there’s reason for it. In the early days of the internet, access to weather data was not public nor free, and was quite expensive. Corporations successfully lobbied the federal government to ban the direct public dissemination of weather data from Federal agencies like NOAA.
[00:01:11] This was a sweetheart deal for AccuWeather.
[00:01:13] In just two decades, the company had grown from a small group of Penn State grads to one of the largest private weather firms in the world. While most of us see and hear their weather forecast on TV and radio every day, it was and still is a major provider of weather data to meteorologists.
[00:01:28] The free for all nature of the internet threatened AccuWeather’s bottom line, as it sold online access to satellites, radar, and model data for about $20 to $40 per month.
[00:01:37] Now, that seems normal, but this is in 1990s dollars. That would cost about $30 to $60 per month today. To say AccuWeather made bank on this arrangement was an understatement. They had up to the minute data when others were hours behind, and useless in quick moving events.
[00:01:52] I know: I spent a good portion of my paychecks in high school and college on the service, called AccuWeather Professional.
[00:01:58] AccuWeather had thousands of subscribers, including academia, weather enthusiasts, and the few independent private sector meteorologists there were at that time. In every way, it monopolized weather data. The weather community fought back, pointing out that AccuWeather had no right to dictate the release of public data funded by the American taxpayer.
[00:02:16] The private sector owes its very existence to this change in policy. AccuWeather founders were pissed off about it. I wrote about this exact topic 20 years ago, which I’ve left a link in the show description. Joel and Barry Myers, AccuWeather’s founders, have been trying to defund the National Weather Service for years.
[00:02:33] AccuWeather’s intense lobbying was even why Republicans couldn’t support Barry Myers’s appointment in the first Trump Administration to head NOAA because he wanted to privatize the National Weather Service. He wasn’t coy about it.
[00:02:44] But I don’t want to make this sound like AccuWeather alone is behind this: they’re just the biggest player.
[00:02:49] There are others with advanced degrees in meteorology peddling similar nonsense. One of these individuals, Dr. Cliff Mass, even has a popular podcast, which you may be subscribed to right now.
[00:02:59] I mention Dr. Mass in particular as he made a comment in a blog post of his in late February, quoting him :
[00:03:06] ” National Weather Service forecasts produced by local offices are generally less skillful than the Weather Channel, Apple, and leading private sector firms. “
[00:03:14] I pause to give you some time to take that in.
[00:03:16] Yes, he really said that. Not only is it laughably false, but it also fails to mention that the Weather Service is forced to do this because it might take something away from what they call ” private weather firms.”
[00:03:28] Just look at the storm onset graphics used by some Weather Service offices, and you’ll see what I mean. They look like a five year old splattered neon paint on a map and are impossible to read. But that’s not the National Weather Service’s fault. It’s the lobbyists.
[00:03:41] Hobble scientists, and they’re going to give you hobbled results. There is ample evidence that understaffed offices had led to Americans dying because of a lack of warnings. But to put Apple forecasts as more skillful than a National Weather Service Office is probably one of the most ridiculous statements I’ve ever heard in a long time… and weather people say some crazy things.
[00:03:59] Folks, this isn’t to criticize anyone personally, however making false statements as a scientist is doubly bad. I can only imagine a world where our GOES satellites are sold off to the highest bidder… which will obviously be AccuWeather… and these folks have nothing they can do about it other than to hope for a change in policy in 2026 with a new Congress.
[00:04:18] Our radar system is perilously close to the end of its lifespan. Are we to expect private industry to be so generous in providing free next generation radar? Of course not.
[00:04:27] This seems to be a coordinated effort by individuals and companies with long standing animosity towards public services, and these sudden cuts are meant to manufacture a crisis.
[00:04:36] Our weather models don’t “suck” because they’re inaccurate: they’re as underfunded as the rest of environmental science. And folks like the Myers’, Dr. Mass, and many others are using distraction tactics around climate change to cripple the National Weather Service on purpose for financial gain.
[00:04:51] We try to steer clear of politics here, but we live in a world where weather data wasn’t free. One company in particular benefited. This just won’t hurt the National Weather Service and NOAA, but the hundreds of private sector weather companies that have been able to flourish as a result of free weather data.
[00:05:06] So what can you do? Get involved. For more, please visit our website at the weather station experts. com forward slash support hyphen the hyphen nws. We have that link in the description. We cannot go down this path again.