The Weather World 2010 project at UIUC began as a comprehensive meteorology tutorial designed for a high school/undergraduate level. It has since expanded to include guides to remote sensing and reading weather maps. (Some highlights include optical effects, severe storms, and the basics of weather forecasting.) For folks in the US, it also has current surface and satellite imagery for a number of different atmospheric properties.
posted by Upton O'Good on Jul 13, 2008 - 6 comments

The Promise of Prediction Markets (full text link; .pdf here). A group of distinguished economists and other scholars has published a call to exempt prediction markets (previously on MeFi: 1, 2) from American laws that restrict internet gambling. [more inside]
posted by googly on May 16, 2008 - 24 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