[fallingknife]

Why is this unfair? With these private companies I get access to all this data for free. If the government did it I would have to pay for it out of my taxes. Why do we need the government to provide more accurate forecasts when this is already taken care of by the private sector?

[Workaccount2]

You get that data for "free" or your hand over your browser data - and likely location data, to unknown third party brokers that know more about you than you know about yourself. Weather apps in particular are notorious for selling your location data, since everyone does "show weather for my current location".

It's "free" in the worst sense of the word.

[radicality]

Do you know much about Windy, and whether they have any ties to selling user location data?

All the plots and features seemed nice so I paid for a year of subscription (after Dark Sky was discontinued ugh), but if they do that I’ll just stick to the default apple Weather app.

[chiph]

> With these private companies I get access to all this data for free.

These companies are already receiving government data for free. And then enriching it with private weather station data (and ads). So your taxes are already funding some part of it.

As computing power being used for forecasting increases (14.5 petaflops each for both Dogwood and Cactus NOAA supercomputers), having more granular data is going to be useful in improving their models.

https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/noaa-completes-upgrade-to-...

[desert_rue]

It is in the public interest to have both weather and forecasts. Maybe you are like me and look out the window to see the weather for that day, but millions need accurate weather and forecasts. They include farmers, those that run power grids, air traffic controllers, and more.