[trop]

NWS -- according to rumor -- deliberately keeps their pages nerdy and undesigned due to pressure from commercial providers (AccuWeather, etc.), which don't want a government-supported a "rival". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Weather_Service_Duties...) Forget that the government rival was there first. It's been awkward to get XML-ish data feeds from NWS, because private industry is trying to make money selling the same data which is freely available from NWS.

The private weather services don't provide much value. Most of the local current conditions data (METAR) is gov't sponsored, not to mention the satellite imagery. The government forecast algorithms are just great -- the gov't has a mandate to do this & does it well. It does make sense to go to a private provider if you have an oil rigs, agribusiness, etc. which needs tailored weather advisories.

The only place for good local weather which isn't cribbing or catching up with NWS is local meteorologists in difficult to judge regions. For example in the hill country of northern Vermont, the Eye on the Sky forecasters will call the weather valley by valley, a luxury which NWS computers won't give.