There’s been incredible growth in private sector meteorology over the past twenty years, and there’s a reason for it. In the early days of the Internet, access to weather data was not public. Companies led by AccuWeather successfully lobbied the Federal Government to ban the direct public dissemination of weather data from federal agencies like NOAA.
This was a sweetheart deal for one company in particular, AccuWeather. In two decades, the company had grown from just a small group of Penn State grads to one of the largest private weather firms in the world. However, the free-for-all nature of the Internet threatened AccuWeather’s bottom line, as it sold access to satellites, radar, and model data for anywhere between $20 and $40 per month.
Now, to 2025 readers, that seems average. But that’s 1990s dollars. It would cost $30-60 per month today—ludicrous to think when we pay nothing now. To say AccuWeather made a bank on this arrangement was an understatement. They had up-to-the-minute data when the output from others was hours behind and all but useless in quick-moving events (remember Unisys, old weather weenies?).
Hobble scientists, and they’ll give you hobbled results.
AccuWeather had subscribers, including academia, weather enthusiasts, and private sector meteorologists (there really were none). In every way, it monopolized weather data in the United States. The meteorology community fought back, pointing out that AccuWeather had no right to dictate the release of public data funded by the American taxpayer.
The entire private sector in meteorology owes its very existence to this policy change. And AccuWeather founders were pissed off about it. I wrote about this exact topic twenty years ago. This is sadly nothing new. Joel and Barry Myers have been trying to defund the National Weather Service for years. The intense lobbying from AccuWeather was why even Republicans couldn’t support Barry Myers’s appointment in the first administration to head NOAA because he wanted to privatize the National Weather Service.
It’s amazing that we have a Senate-confirmed head of NOAA this quickly, but that does not stop the damage.
It’s not just AccuWeather
But Joel and Barry Myers aren’t the worst of it. There are others with advanced degrees in meteorology peddling similar nonsense. Take this gem from Dr. Cliff Mass in his “supportive” yet backstabbing post about the situation with NOAA last week.
Yes, a man with multiple degrees from some of the nation’s most prestigious meteorology schools and at a highly respected institution somehow had the mental lapse to make a statement like this. Not only is it laughably false, but it also fails to mention that the NWS is forced to make sure horrid maps are made because it might take something away from “private weather firms.”
Just look at the storm onset graphics used by some National Weather Service offices, and you’ll see what I mean. They look like a five-year-old splattered neon paint on a map and are impossible to read. But that’s not the NWS’s fault; it’s the lobbyists.
Hobble scientists, and they’re going to give you hobbled results. There is ample evidence that understaffed offices have led to Americans dying because of a lack of warnings. But to put Apple forecasts as more skillful than a National Weather Service office is probably one of the most ridiculous statements I’ve ever heard out of the private weather community.
But then, the comments reveal why Dr. Mass thinks the way he does, and I’m not shocked. When a commenter points out that Project 2025 said all this is coming, his response tells us all we need to know. It’s all the left’s fault!
Good lord. I have been saying it for many years, but a particular brand of conservatism similar to Trump’s has been running through the meteorology community to its extreme detriment. They love to act like they’re in the “know,” but we find out later they’re no better than anyone else. In the case of Dr. Ryan Maue, they will compromise their scientific objectivity to force their opinion down others’ throats.
Dr. Mass has no more clue than we do. And when you’re saying it’s clear that the Trump administration isn’t following Project 2025 when every metric in the document seems to suggest just that, you’re not supporting NOAA any more than AccuWeather has, which is all about profit. Why are smart meteorologists throwing away their reputations like this? What is the point? The weather community is all ears, fellas.
Stop the BS, FUND NOAA and the NWS
I want to tip my hat to those across private industry who may have voted either way, saying we exist because of the NWS. Bobby Matriarch at EPAWA, Reed Timmer, Ryan Hall, Y’all, and others, we see you and thank you. If this is allowed to continue any further, I do fear that many of these fine folks will spend much more of their own money on something our tax dollars built for everyone to use.
I can only imagine a world where our GOES satellites are sold off to the highest bidder—which will obviously be AccuWeather—and these folks have nothing they can do about it other than hope for a change in policy in 2026 with a new Congress. Our radar system is perilously close to the end of its lifespan. Are we to expect private industry to be so generous in providing free next-generation radar? Of course not.
This seems to me a coordinated effort by individuals and companies with long-standing animosity towards public services, and these sudden cuts are meant to manufacture a crisis. Our weather models don’t suck because they’re inaccurate, they’re also as underfunded as the rest of environmental science. And folks like the Myers, Dr. Mass, Dr. Maue, and many others are using distraction tactics around climate change to cripple the National Weather Service on purpose for financial gain.
But the focus needs to start at the top, and AccuWeather isn’t playing fair and hasn’t essentially its entire existence. An antitrust inquiry would be a nice place to start. And that might be the one area where the second Trump administration may not be as lax as the business community thinks.
We can only hope at this point.
This editorial is the sole opinion of the author and not necessarily the opinion of The Weather Station Experts and The Weather Whys Company.
