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Who owns the weather report? We do, let's keep it that way. Reprint from January, 2019 [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-02-12

Unfortunately, what’s old is new again now that we’re in FOTUS 2.0; so this is a reprint of an earlier diary.

Some of the names have changed, but the sentiment and risk still stands. Barry Myers is no longer CEO of AccuWeather, but his brother still works there.

NOAA, which includes the National Weather Service, (NWS), is clearly in the sights of the shadow prez, so our access to the weather we’ve paid to develop and communicate is at grave risk of privatization.

*******

This week’s diary is inspired by our conversations about the weather, and one of the stories Michael Lewis tells in his latest book, The Fifth Risk. The title of the book alludes to one of the risks used in risk assessments — the risk posed by poor project management; or as is the case with this book, the DJT transition, and appointees. NPR has a good review of the book, here, and provides a nice segue for my writing.

Some of the people that Trump has nominated for key government posts Lewis views as deeply troubling. Take Trump's choice to head National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Commerce Department agency that, among other responsibilities, oversees the National Weather Service. For that critical position, Trump has chosen Barry Myers, who is CEO of the private forecasting service AccuWeather. As Lewis points out, AccuWeather repackages the weather service's own data and sells it to private concerns for a profit. Myers at one time argued that "the government should get out of the forecasting business." In other words, you want to know if it's going to rain tomorrow? Or which way that hurricane is tracking? Well, buy our app, or subscribe to our forecasts. Myers has yet to be confirmed.

As with his other books, Michael Lewis uses personal stories to tell broader stories, and in the case of the National Weather Service, the story is grounded in DJ Patil who stumbled upon weather data as a college student. The federal government collects immense amounts of data on everything, and weather is one of them. As Lewis points out,

Since the end of the Second World War, weather data collection has become one of the greatest illustrations of the possibilities of global collaboration and public-spiritedness. Every day thousands of amateur weather observers report data to their governments, as do a lot of experts aboard commercial planes in the sky and on ships at sea.

He also describes the efforts from around the world that also collect weather information from ocean buoys. And adds the big dollar equipment to give a complete picture of how and where the data is collected.

Then there’s the data collected by billion-dollar satellites and fancy radar stations--in the United States alone, the National Weather Service maintains 159 high-resolution Dopper radar sites.

So, with big investments from the government, the data has improved, and hence weather reports have improved.

Weather reports provide vital information to the complete cross section of American life. Sports, businesses who rely on certain weather conditions for their business, students, government agencies responsible for keeping roads open, mass transit, and lowly people like me who want to know when it’s cool enough, or dry enough for a walk. Another area where accurate weather information is absolutely critical is in military operations.

Patil illustrates this need in dramatic fashion.

The failed hostage rescue in Iran was caused by a sandstorm we didn’t see coming. The Kosovo offensive was so effective because we knew we wouldn’t have cloud cover.

These two operations took place nearly two decades apart. Imagine how technology has changed since the late 1990s and how much data there is for those that use it.

Fortunately you don’t have to imagine, because Lewis tells us that, “Each and every day, NOAA collects twice as much data as is contained in the entire book collection of the Library of Congress.” Data has been the buzzword for decades and now there’s an even bigger market for the Weather Service data.

Here’s the part of the story where the risk of poor management comes in; October 2017. A full 9 months after the inauguration, Barry Myers is nominated to lead NOAA.

A former Bush administration alum who was helping with the Commerce Department transition, supplied a list of 6 politically acceptable people who could lead the agency. Myers was not on the list. I’m sure that doesn’t shock anyone reading this diary.

At the time, Barry Myers was CEO of AccuWeather, and the value of his shares in the privately held company was ~$57 million. Myers was not a scientist, which made him wildly unqualified for leading a scientific agency. But that’s to be expected, especially under the current administration.

As for AccuWeather itself, and his leadership of it, he has been on a mission to not only profit from the Weather Service data, (which is allowed), but to prevent the National Weather Service from publishing their reports publicly. You read that correctly. You want to know what the weather’s going to be today, or this weekend, better hope your subscription to AccuWeather forecasts is up to date. Imagine the possibility of having to pay extra for tornado warnings, or more precise hurricane forecasts? According to Lewis, Myers has been lobbying Capitol Hill since the 1990s to block the National Weather Service from issuing forecasts. Going as far as saying, The National Weather Service does not need to have the final say on warnings. The customer and the private sector should be able to sort that out. The government should get out of the forecasting business. If you need another reason to dislike Rick Santorum, I’ve got one for you. He sponsored legislation that would have done just that. Fortunately it did not pass. Lewis provides critical context of what that legislation would mean to us, the taxpayers. Pause a moment to consider the audacity of that maneuver. A private company whose weather predictions were totally dependent on the billions of dollars spent by the U.S. taxpayer to gather the data necessary for those predictions, and on decades of intellectual weather work sponsored by the U.S. taxpayer, and on international data-sharing treaties made on behalf of the U.S. taxpayer, and on the very forecasts that the National Weather Service generated, was, in effect, trying to force the U.S. taxpayer to pay all over again for what the National Weather Service might be able to tell him or her for free. The failed Santorum bill didn’t slow Myers down too much. He then spent his time being as disruptive as possible to the National Weather Service. For example, he managed to stop another business, the Weather Company from donating technology to NOAA to put their data on the cloud. At this point, Myers’ nomination to head NOAA died when he went unconfirmed. He would need to be renominated to be considered again. In the hope of that happening he has apparently sold his shares in AccuWeather and has left the company. Should he be renominated, we all need to be prepared to lobby our Senators to vote NO for Myers as the head of NOAA. For now I leave you, courtesy of Michael Lewis, with this sneak peek into an actual event that foretells what the future could look like if the National Weather Service is unable to broadcast or disseminate the data they collect on our behalf: One version of the future revealed itself in March 2015. The National Weather Service had failed to spot a tornado before it struck Moore, Oklahoma. It had spun up and vanished very quickly, but, still, the people in the Weather Service should have spotted it. AccuWeather quickly issued a press release bragging that it had sent a tornado alert to its paying corporate customers in Moore twelve minutes before the tornado hit. The big point is that AccuWeather never broadcast its tornado warning. The only people received it were the people who had paid for it — and God help those who hadn’t. While the tornado was touching down in Moore, AccuWeather’s network channel was broadcasting videos of...hippos, swimming. ******* Well, we know what the future looks like and it’s an absolute disaster. The felon in the WH has nominated Neil Jacobs to lead NOAA. Not sure how much it matters that he is a scientist who worked at NOAA under the first FOTUS administration, since the Shadow Prez is likely to hollow out that agency as well. Light your candles, pray to your deity, and speak up with family & friends about the risk that comes with losing access to this critical data.

Palate Cleanser!

In honor of this week’s full moon, here’s my fuzzy picture I took of a full moon several years ago on a camping trip.

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