If you live in LA, it doesn't matter

Yeah, yeah - I've been a bad blogger this month. I've been working on a project at the office that's been kicking my ass up and down - I mean, I'm dreaming about this stuff. Argh! Anyway, it's almost complete so hopefully I'll be able to post more often soon. To try to get back into the groove, here's a beaut from a name we're all familiar with:

Do you want a seven-day weather forecast for your ZIP code? Or hour-by-hour predictions of the temperature, wind speed, humidity and chance of rain? Or weather data beamed to your cellphone?

That information is available for free from the National Weather Service.

But under a bill pending in the U.S. Senate, it might all disappear.

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.

I used to surf to the Weather Channel to get my forecasts until they started hiding them. They've gotten better lately, but remember when you'd have to search for the input box to enter your zip, then all you got was golfing ads? Now that I use Firefox, I keep track of the weather using the Forecast Fox extension. Much sweetness.

Anyway, back to the story. Here's the reasoning, straight from a completely unbiased source:

"The National Weather Service has not focused on what its core mission should be, which is protecting other people's lives and property," said [AccuWeather's executive vice president Barry] 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. [emph. mine]

"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.

Looks like Senator ManOnDog is taking his talking points from "industry leaders."

I love NWS's response:

"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," [NWS director of strategic planning and policy Ed]Johnson said. "You don't just plug in your clock when you want to know what time it is."