Free the Weather? On Slate, Timothy Noah explains how Santorum's National Weather Services Duties Act effectively gags NWS in private weather's favor. [more inside]
posted by brownpau on Aug 3, 2005 - 17 comments

Sen. Rick Santorum, (R-Pa) introduced a bill in the Senate last week that 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. He says that as he reads the bill, a vast amount of federal weather data would be forced offline. "I believe I've paid for that data once. ... I don't want to have to pay for it again," said Scott Bradner, a technical consultant at Harvard University. The bill has been referred to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
posted by spock on Apr 21, 2005 - 86 comments

The National Weather Service's new wind-chill scale has ruffled some feathers. The new formula is slightly more complicated than the one we've been using since 1945. It's also different from the Real-Feel Temperature Index, the one proposed in 1999 by Accu-Weather, the World's Weather Authority[TM]. Accu-Weather is cranky: they say the new formula is confusing, that change is confusing, and that private businesses are better able to make these decisions.

Who takes it? Whose chill-factor formula reigns supreme?
posted by gleuschk on Nov 26, 2001 - 30 comments