
Private weather organizations have stumbled onto a business plan that’s both entirely dependent on science - as close as most Americans actually get to science in their day-to-day lives - and has the luxury to not really give a damn about that science.Some might say the best way to predict the weather is to look out your window, but thanks to modern-day technology like The Weather Channel, we can check the weather with ease while listening to bomb-arse music that sounds ripped right out of a Japanese RPG soundtrack.Ī viral post made the rounds on Twitter this week showcasing a very “JRPG sounding” track from the Weather Channel. Maybe the, ahem, Bain Capital-owned (in part) property keeps its advocating for improved climate science in America closeted, but I suspect not. I tried reasonably hard to find any evidence of the Weather Channel lobbying for NOAA funding or making statements about NOAA funding or advocating for its lifeblood, but nothing much turned up. That could be an approximately $5 billion a year government agency, or some dude with incense.

They haven’t lost the ability to sell anything a slick dressing can be applied to anything.

The Weather Channel probably wouldn’t care all that much if forecast data came from psychics, so long as every one else is getting their information from psychics. Because all of the competition is limited to the same thing. So: which model is better, or what predictions do the models repeat.Īnd there’s no reason to go beyond what the NOAA provides - or provide non-tax support to the NOAA - even if a private entity had the means to duplicate the NOAA’s massive infrastructure. But, what you’d be less likely to hear is that that analysis is less of raw, uninterpreted data than it is of model-based predictions provided by the NOAA (and its overseas analogs). If pressed, the answer you’d get from the industry is that what it provides is analysis, and that’s crucial. Sometimes the end-result forecasts are distinct, but it’s still all slightly different interpretations of the same stuff, with no ability to go beyond that. you get the same information fed from different brands.
Weather channel full#
You’d just about have to assume that every meteorology brand is totally proprietary, has its own equipment orbiting in space and its own forecast models, composed by long rooms full of feverishly working statisticians. Every weather operation out there advertises its own very exclusive, very superior operation. The business of weather forecasting is one of the top marvels of taxpayers funding private business that exists.
Weather channel download#
Yep, all the way up to and including a direct download from the actual satellites, it’s free.
Weather channel tv#
The Weather Channel - or Weather Underground or your TV weather person or your DIY forecasting buddy - pretty much just have what we have, which is the internet and the ability to access government-supplied data. Their weather satellites are probably better anyway.

But that’s fine, right? We can just get our forecasts from the Weather Channel in 2017.

The JPSS-1 is currently funding itself only because it’s been able to squirrel away money from other NOAA projects. The gap, predicted to occur between 20, is the result of mismanagement and, unsurprisingly, funding squeezes.
