AccuWeather vs. the NWS

Okay, so I really want to post about Earth Day and all the crap that Bush has done to the environment while telling the public how environmentally friendly he is, but I'm not sure I have the time or the energy to dive into that right now. So I'm going to write about something I'll call AccuWeather vs. the NWS.

Let me preface this with saying that AccuWeather is a private company who probably supplies the forecast to your newspaper or radio. They have a reputation of not having the most accurate of forecasts. Giving them some credit, it's hard to have accurate local forecasts when you're forecasting nationally.

Anyway, there has been a bill introduced in the Senate by Santorum (R-Pa) that would make it illegal for the National Weather Service to put free forecasts online. I just have to say that this is ridiculous. The bill technically prohibits federal meteorologist from competing with private meteorologists. So basically what it is doing is prohibitng the NWS from doing it's job. They do forecasts, they do severe weather, the do hurricanes. They'll do the forecasts reguardless of being allowed to release it to the public or not, so why shouldn't they be allowed to release it to the public?

I gotta say that I prefer the weather service information over anything AccuWeather or the Weather Channel have to offer, and there's good reason for that. (Oh yeah, and did I forget to mention that these private companies get their data from the NWS?)