[HN Gopher] AccuWeather to discontinue free access to Core Weath...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       AccuWeather to discontinue free access to Core Weather API
        
       Author : TerribleTurnout
       Score  : 212 points
       Date   : 2025-07-23 19:26 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (developer.accuweather.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (developer.accuweather.com)
        
       | otterley wrote:
       | NWS's APIs are still free of charge:
       | https://www.weather.gov/documentation/services-web-api
        
         | macintux wrote:
         | For now. There's a pretty decent chance that AccuWeather is
         | discontinuing this in anticipation that the NWS is going to be
         | sabotaged.
         | 
         | Update: https://gizmodo.com/republicans-project-2025-would-end-
         | free-...
        
           | exe34 wrote:
           | > "These form a colossal operation that has become one of the
           | main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as
           | such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity," Project 2025
           | says. "This industry's mission emphasis on prediction and
           | management seems designed around the fatal conceit of
           | planning for the unplannable."
           | 
           | Shoot the messenger and bury your head in the sand!
        
             | evilkorn wrote:
             | Don't look up
        
             | michaelsshaw wrote:
             | It's funny that they call it planning for the unplannable
             | when the NWS have given extremely specific instructions on
             | what to do in all sorts of inclement situations. This
             | passage was just baffling.
        
             | ndiddy wrote:
             | Meanwhile China has reached their 2030 goal of peak CO2
             | emissions 5 years early by rapidly deploying
             | solar/wind/nuclear and manufacturing cheap EVs for personal
             | transport. I wish the US was capable of working towards and
             | achieving large-scale societal goals like that.
        
               | rjbwork wrote:
               | We are. Just look at the current administration. What
               | they've accomplished in just 6 months is staggering.
               | 
               | We've just let the wrong sort of people control our
               | communication infrastructure, set the messages
               | disseminated by that infrastructure, and take power in a
               | multi-pronged attack.
               | 
               | There's no reason there couldn't have been an FDR-esque
               | strongman driven emulation of China's approach.
               | 
               | Instead we're blowing up the national debt, cutting
               | services, dismantling soft power, destroying our
               | scientific and academic infrastructure, and expanding the
               | military.
        
               | Spoom wrote:
               | Arguably Americans voted for all of that, though. It was
               | laid out in a document that was public years in advance.
        
               | rjbwork wrote:
               | Well, there are varying opinions on that. I agree with
               | you somewhat, but many that "voted for that" have said
               | otherwise and either 1) didn't ever hear about said
               | document or 2) actively dismissed it as "fake news" or 3)
               | believed the president when he said he'd never heard of
               | it and it wouldn't be his agenda.
        
               | evan_ wrote:
               | Trump himself, and his spokespeople, all publicly denied
               | that they had anything to do with Project 2025 ahead of
               | the election. It was a laughable lie, the only people who
               | believed it were apparently the media, who reported it as
               | fact.
        
               | exe34 wrote:
               | And the numpties who voted for him.
        
               | LeifCarrotson wrote:
               | It's always easier to tear things down than it is to
               | build things, the past 6 months are staggering but not
               | because they're impressive.
        
               | sunflowerfly wrote:
               | We once were. We built canals, a massive railroad system,
               | then our interstate system. Likely a sign of our slow
               | decline to a has been country.
               | 
               | Today we should be building subways, a hub and spoke high
               | speed rail system, and an automated hub and spoke freight
               | system that uses trucks only for first and last mile. And
               | maybe a tunnel at the Bering straight.
        
               | geoka9 wrote:
               | > And maybe a tunnel at the Bering straight.
               | 
               | Interesting idea. Why?
        
             | ryandrake wrote:
             | None of it even makes any sense. So, our national ability
             | to predict whether it's going to rain this weekend,
             | anywhere in the country, is "climate change alarm?"
        
               | exe34 wrote:
               | I don't think they're educated enough to know the
               | difference.
        
               | sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
               | It's one of those troublesome "reality has a left wing
               | bias" problems. If you let the facts express themselves
               | too much, the gap between truth and propaganda becomes
               | too noticeable. Can't have that.
        
               | krferriter wrote:
               | They're just evil and want to maximize short term profit
               | with no consideration of side effects or impacts to
               | future trajectories, and their ideas are so stupid and
               | shortsighted they don't even maximize short term profits
               | either.
        
               | krapp wrote:
               | You're talking about an administration voted in by people
               | who attack meteorologists because they think they cause
               | hurricanes[0], and a President who has called climate
               | change a Chinese hoax.
               | 
               | This is a perfectly rational set of policies as far as
               | these people are concerned. How else are we going to stop
               | the Jewish space lasers?
               | 
               | [0]https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/14/us/meteorologists-
               | threats...
        
             | throw0101b wrote:
             | Yeah:
             | 
             | > _" The Pentagon ... announced that we are eliminating
             | woke climate change programs and initiatives inconsistent
             | with our core warfighting mission," [Chief Pentagon
             | Spokesman Sean Parnell] said._
             | 
             | * https://www.defense.gov/News/News-
             | Stories/Article/Article/41...
             | 
             | See also "Pentagon Starts Purging Climate Change Measures":
             | 
             | * https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-
             | pentagon-pu...
             | 
             | But from 2021 (during Biden), "Climate change is a risk to
             | national security, the Pentagon says"
             | 
             | * https://www.npr.org/2021/10/26/1049222045/the-pentagon-
             | says-...
        
             | input_sh wrote:
             | For context, this is something AccuWeather in particular
             | lobbied for for decades. This was their goal in particular.
             | 
             | In 2005: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Weather_Ser
             | vice_Dutie...
             | 
             | > In the wake of the bill's introduction, Santorum was
             | accused of political impropriety and influence peddling
             | because Joel Myers, the head of Pennsylvania-based
             | AccuWeather and one of Santorum's constituents, was also a
             | Santorum campaign contributor.
             | 
             | In 2017, when Berry Myers (AKA the CEO of AccuWeather) was
             | nominated to head the NOAA, but was never confirmed into
             | the position (due to the series of sexual misconduct at the
             | company), ultimately withdrewing his nomination two years
             | later.
             | 
             | Right now, when Neil Jacobs (long time vocal proponent of
             | comercialising weather data who maintained a social media
             | profile called "The Greatest Hoax" in reference to climate
             | change) and Taylor Jordan (a lobbyist for many weather
             | companies, including AccuWeather of course) got appointed
             | into the position of overseeing NOAA.
        
           | imglorp wrote:
           | If the sabotage proceeds, effects will be felt by nautical,
           | aviation, agriculture, commerce, water management,
           | hydroelectric, and on and on. Weather is critical
           | infrastructure for everything like roads and power. It can't
           | be replaced by privatization.
           | 
           | It's another attack from within.
        
             | arm32 wrote:
             | > It's another attack from within.
             | 
             | So, Wednesday?
        
               | Applejinx wrote:
               | Yup. I concur, it'll be because they expect sabotage.
        
             | ToucanLoucan wrote:
             | You're not wrong, but their idiotic ideas having
             | catastrophic effects hasn't stopped them doing anything
             | yet. Probably because none of them have a clue what they're
             | doing.
        
               | imoverclocked wrote:
               | That's open to interpretation; Obviously, someone has a
               | clue since it's part of a plan. It may just be that the
               | people who have no clue are put there to make following
               | the plan easier.
        
               | brokencode wrote:
               | Just because they have a plan, doesn't mean they have a
               | clue. Their reasoning for this could be as simple as
               | "government bad".
               | 
               | Just look at the wild abandon with which DOGE has gone
               | about its cuts. They literally fired the experts who
               | inspect our nuclear arsenal, then had to scramble to hire
               | them back because you know.. it's literally nuclear bombs
               | we're talking about.
        
               | kingkawn wrote:
               | If the plan is "break things" it does not imply any
               | underlying of understanding, both of the things in
               | question or even how to effectively break them
        
               | babypuncher wrote:
               | They know exactly what they're doing.
               | 
               | The billionaire class are bilking the country for every
               | cent its worth, and when everything finally crumbles they
               | will move to the next country with a stable middle class
               | and start the process all over again.
               | 
               | They do not care about these consequences because they
               | have enough resources at their disposal to protect
               | themselves while everyone else suffers.
        
               | rjbwork wrote:
               | Leveraged buying/private equity play at the scale of the
               | nation state.
        
             | _heimdall wrote:
             | Aren't the problems you point to just business
             | justification for companies offering this service for a fee
             | rather than subsidizing the fees with federal debt?
        
               | joezydeco wrote:
               | I've seen this repeated many times but I have yet to see
               | anyone mention, by name, which paid weather service is
               | selling a feed with the same level of service and
               | coverage as the NWS/NOAA. Anyone?
        
               | imglorp wrote:
               | Only NWS has a vast network of sensors: river gauges
               | (with USGS), doppler radars, satellites, airport AOS
               | automated observation systems, etc etc. to support the
               | mission.
               | 
               | Most of the privates are just repackaging their feeds and
               | data. So if you kill NOAA they will have to start almost
               | from scratch.
        
               | dingnuts wrote:
               | In my experience, having used several paid weather APIs
               | for hobby crap, the NWS ones are generally the worst in
               | every way.
               | 
               | They're slower, harder to query, the documentation is
               | worse, and they have less data available because the
               | others buy data from private weather stations and re
               | bundle it in addition to pre processing and repackaging
               | the Federal data into better formats on your behalf
               | 
               | I say this as a NOAA lover; the government just isn't
               | good at building APIs.
        
               | _heimdall wrote:
               | Well you're describing the chicken and egg problem. If
               | there is high demand for this data a company would fill
               | that niche, but they would have no reason to until the
               | free data is gone.
               | 
               | I also think this chain of comments is a bit off the
               | rails of my original point (maybe my fault). It honestly
               | doesn't matter if there is pain to be felt by removing
               | government services, we spend entirely too much money and
               | any solution to that _will_ hurt.
               | 
               | If we are only willing to remove spending that hurts
               | little to no one we might as well throw in the towel
               | already, we'll never cut spending with that as a gate.
        
               | Larrikin wrote:
               | No
        
               | bearcobra wrote:
               | Companies can and do offer data for a fee. In the same
               | way that private toll road existing doesn't mean we
               | should get rid of the highway system, a paid option
               | doesn't mean the government should stop providing a
               | publicly funded option given the immense value it
               | provides to society
        
               | _heimdall wrote:
               | If the government option successfully creates a
               | government monopoly, maybe we should?
               | 
               | In this case we simply don't know what the market needs
               | or market value of these services are because no one is
               | incentivized to compete with the subsidized government
               | program.
        
               | chaorace wrote:
               | Yes, of course. We're all reasonable adults who are
               | capable of acknolwedging that services of value cost
               | money.
               | 
               | It just so happens that weather is a phenomenon which
               | affects all people and requires large, distributed,
               | passive infrastructure to effectively manage. It's a
               | classic case where the public option is bound to be more
               | efficient in terms of absolute resource allocation.
               | 
               | On what basis do I assert that it's "bound" to be more
               | efficient? Simple: weather affects the production,
               | transportation, and logistics of virtually _all_ goods.
               | The costs of weather are therefore distributed equally
               | across society regardless of government policy.
               | Government is very good at delivering this specific type
               | of centralized basic infrastructure in a cost-effective
               | way ( _see also: roads_ ), so if we're all paying for it
               | together regardless this is a no-brainer policy.
        
             | appreciatorBus wrote:
             | If weather info is that valuable to so many private
             | interests, wouldn't the public get a better deal by
             | insisting that private interests pay market prices (to the
             | public service provider) for that info?
             | 
             | We commonly assume that a publicly owned service serves the
             | public good by giving away the service for free, but this
             | assumes the public's only role is as passive consumer,
             | whose sole interest is seeing the price as low as possible,
             | if not $0
             | 
             | However the public is also the owner and as owners of the
             | service, we are arguably being taking advantage of by
             | private interests who take the free data, only to turn
             | around and create private value with it.
        
               | ViscountPenguin wrote:
               | I mean, there's a relatively famous mechanism for
               | garnering a portion of all private value produced by such
               | a thing.
        
               | actionfromafar wrote:
               | I know, I know! ... is it _tariffs_? Because then China
               | and Mexico will pay them!
        
               | spankalee wrote:
               | Like roads, parks, postal service, police, fire fighting,
               | education, sewers, etc., the government is allowed to
               | provide public goods. We don't have to live in a
               | Libertarian dystopia.
        
               | rconti wrote:
               | Maybe the public would get a better deal fiscally.
               | 
               | Would having to change APIs every 17 months as providers
               | change their terms, constantly having to deal with
               | breaking changes, etc, etc, etc be a "better deal"?
               | There's an advantage in stability, and that's one thing
               | governments typically provide. Yes, you can argue "a
               | private provider could provide stability... for a fee".
               | Which works great until it turns out even the fee isn't
               | enough to keep them around. And you have to switch
               | providers. Again.
        
               | Theodores wrote:
               | Compare and contrast the American and the British weather
               | services.
               | 
               | In the USA it was the case that, if the taxpayer paid for
               | it, then it was free. Meanwhile, in the UK, the Thatcher
               | government decided that it would be best if government
               | agencies earned their keep. As a consequence, in the UK,
               | weather data became chargeable. This meant that there was
               | no growth of third party applications that built on Met
               | Office data.
               | 
               | This became a market distortion with TV weather, where
               | the BBC had their data from the Met Office whereas ITV
               | had to use American data, with a specialist broadcaster -
               | The Weather Department - providing the video inserts. The
               | Weather Department eventually came into competition with
               | the Met Office providing their own video inserts, so the
               | marketplace was uncompetitive yet 'competitive'.
               | 
               | Compare with the BBC online news, which does not have to
               | pay for itself in the same way that the mainstream news
               | organisations such as The Guardian, The Telegraph et al.
               | have to either go for paywalls or a smorgasbord of
               | adverts. It is essentially impossible to compete against
               | the BBC for news eyeballs online in the UK due to this
               | competition model.
               | 
               | With weather you need two independent supercomputer
               | outfits that crunch the numbers and come up with forecast
               | data. Why two (or more)? Because forecast models can be
               | wrong in ways that human forecasters can understand and
               | work with. If there are two 'sources of truth' then you
               | can use your gut to go with which one feels right.
               | 
               | Vast supercomputer outfits cost lots of money and, until
               | recently, only a government of considerable size could
               | pay for such an investment. The investment isn't just in
               | the computers, you need a constant stream of
               | meteorologists that can work with the data, so that means
               | one or more universities with the specialism. In the UK
               | we have Reading, that is the best place to go to if you
               | want to get into forecasting, for TV, the military,
               | farming or aviation.
               | 
               | Free weather data is a public good and also 'soft power'.
               | In Ireland they don't have their own weather
               | supercomputers or universities that are renowned for
               | producing expert weather forecasters, hence they need
               | British or American help.
               | 
               | I also forgot the satellites, which is in another league
               | of expense, but necessary for all kinds of observation
               | data.
               | 
               | Observations are interesting as the reliance has
               | historically been on airfields. We missed a chance to get
               | mobile phone base stations reporting in to have vastly
               | more data. Given the amount of money involved in mobile,
               | when the governments sold off the spectrum they could
               | have used the opportunity to insist on weather
               | observation data being collected, in order to refine the
               | model.
               | 
               | Sometimes you get a town next to a lake with a massive
               | mountain behind it where the forecast will consistently
               | be wrong due to how the modelling works and a lack of
               | observation data to make corrections. There are many
               | scenarios such as this and the mobile phone masts could
               | have been used to fill the gaps.
               | 
               | If the UK provided free data (and the USA didn't) then we
               | wouldn't talking about AccuWeather, it would be some
               | British company that the world would be relying on for
               | their apps. This British company would be modest in size
               | but still providing good jobs and keeping graduates from
               | Reading employed. In turn they would be working with
               | people developing specialist apps, for example, weather
               | for race courses and there would be much tax paid to
               | government to make it worth their while, plus national
               | prestige in having 'the best weather service' going.
               | 
               | Another example of a British mistake is the Ordnance
               | Survey, purveyor of paid for maps. Nobody uses Ordnance
               | Survey, it is always Google Maps, Apple Maps or
               | OpenStreetMap. They get pennies from developers and
               | architects that need the official Ordnance Survey maps
               | but nothing from day to day usage, in effect they have
               | lost out.
               | 
               | All these things need to be for the public good, paid for
               | out of public taxation and a genuine free market of
               | private enterprise fostered, otherwise nothing happens.
        
               | Spooky23 wrote:
               | Exactly. We don't some socialists telling us about
               | hurricanes. The peasants can't afford umbrellas anyway.
        
               | TehCorwiz wrote:
               | We do pay for these services. Both as individuals and as
               | organizations. It's called taxes. And those taxes are set
               | by congress, people we elect to represent us. And
               | congress also determines how those taxes will be spent.
               | In this case, we've been collecting and spending taxes on
               | delivering critical weather information and maintaining
               | critical weather monitoring apparatus. Because commerce,
               | safety, etc rely on that information.
               | 
               | Can you imagine how things might be different if there
               | was an additional group of people involved whose only
               | goal is to siphon money out? Capitalism is predicated on
               | the idea that the goal is to charge the most and deliver
               | the least. In this case doing that would mean delays at
               | best and death at worst. Weather is dangerous.
        
               | reaperducer wrote:
               | _If weather info is that valuable to so many private
               | interests, wouldn 't the public get a better deal by
               | insisting that private interests pay market prices (to
               | the public service provider) for that info?_
               | 
               | There are plenty of private weather companies, and many
               | private companies employ their own meteorologists and
               | massive computers to generate their own forecasts. (Think
               | agriculture, logistics, aviation, oil exploration.)
               | 
               | Not every company can afford a supercomputer. The NWS
               | forecasts and data are valuable to every other person and
               | company.
               | 
               | Also, the addition of NWS data makes everyone's weather
               | forecasts better. Note how television hurricane forecasts
               | don't show one model, but many models from many sources.
               | All this again is in the interest of commerce, which
               | drives tax revenue.
        
             | Alupis wrote:
             | > It's another attack from within.
             | 
             | The amount of fearmongering and scaremongering in this
             | thread is literally off the charts.
             | 
             | No, the weather service isn't being shut down... one
             | private organization decides to charge for API access (you
             | know, to make money) and immediately you folks go straight
             | into sabotage and end-of-the-world conspiracy theories.
             | 
             | It took me all of 3 seconds to find several mentions to the
             | big ooga-booga, "project 2025". The article is literally
             | about a _private organization_ and you folks go right into
             | the conspiracies... it 's exhausting.
             | 
             | At this point, I think I have to assume some of you
             | actually _enjoy_ being afraid. Some sort of coping
             | mechanism for losing an election and not getting your way
             | for 4 years...
        
               | Spooky23 wrote:
               | Accuweather spent a lot of money lobbying to charge for
               | NWS data years ago. It's not exactly a secret or a
               | conspiracy to assume they wouldn't like to replace free
               | weather data with their own subscriptions.
        
               | Alupis wrote:
               | So what does a _private_ organization deciding to charge
               | for their own API access have to do with the
               | government???
               | 
               | Get your weather data from NWS if you want... serving an
               | API to anyone/everyone costs money, and AccuWeather
               | apparently decided enough was enough. AccuWeather has _no
               | obligation_ to give you free resources. Same as Reddit,
               | same as Twitter, same as so many companies before them.
               | 
               | Oh no, that's right. It _must_ be a conspiracy to end the
               | world!
               | 
               | Here's the actual NWS API[1], you know... the free one
               | that's not going away nor is charging for access.
               | 
               | [1] https://www.weather.gov/documentation/services-web-
               | api
        
               | jfengel wrote:
               | So, you missed the part where "project 2025" is about the
               | _government_ ending access to this information?
               | 
               | And that this "private organization" is one of the
               | supporters of "project 2025"?
               | 
               | This is not hidden. This is happening in public. And yes,
               | the worst hasn't happened yet -- the government removing
               | access to data that has long been free -- but if it does,
               | would you agree that it is a bad thing?
               | 
               | If you think that the government should indeed do that,
               | then this isn't a conspiracy theory; it's just saying out
               | loud that this is a thing you're encouraging the
               | government to do. If you think the government should not
               | do that, then you should consider the evidence that it is
               | in fact happening.
        
               | Alupis wrote:
               | > This is not hidden. This is happening in public.
               | 
               | Yes, a _private organization_ has decided to charge for
               | access to their resources, aka their API.
               | 
               | What on earth does that have to do with the government
               | and this boogey-man "project 2025"???
               | 
               | Step off your soap box for a moment and contemplate what
               | you are saying. It's lunacy at it's finest...
               | 
               | Was it "project 2025" that made Reddit charge for their
               | API access? What about Twitter? Booga-booga!
        
           | sbstp wrote:
           | Project 2025 strongly opposes everything good in this world.
        
             | reactordev wrote:
             | To them, it's bad, to us, it's good. Good and bad are
             | subjective when one side refuses science. You can show them
             | data until you're blue in the face but they won't
             | understand it, they won't listen to reason because they are
             | on a mission to remake the US like their racist
             | grandfathers liked it. All workers report to the floor.
        
             | pstuart wrote:
             | Their adherents are too irony impaired to realize that
             | "they are the baddies".
        
           | cess11 wrote:
           | That will surely make US agriculture great again.
        
             | foobarian wrote:
             | Time to buy Gatorade stock
        
               | seemaze wrote:
               | It's got what plants crave
        
               | cess11 wrote:
               | If I wanted to gamble on stocks I'd rather look for a way
               | to short Nvidia sometime soon.
        
               | mikestew wrote:
               | What you replied to...wasn't really investment advice.
        
           | throw0101b wrote:
           | > _https://gizmodo.com/republicans-project-2025-would-end-
           | free-..._
           | 
           | John Oliver did an episode on this during Trump 1.0:
           | 
           | * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMGn9T37eR8
           | 
           | * https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11110660/
           | 
           | * s06e26: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Last_Week_Ton
           | ight_with...
           | 
           | * https://old.reddit.com/r/television/comments/dhmo0c/weather
           | _...
        
             | lelandfe wrote:
             | Also talked about in Michael Lewis's book _Fifth Risk_.
        
               | throw0101b wrote:
               | > _Also talked about in Michael Lewis's book_ Fifth Risk.
               | 
               | Highly recommend that book. Haven't gotten to his most
               | recent _Who Is Government?_ :
               | 
               | * https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/788713/who-is-
               | govern...
               | 
               | But from the interviews it sounds interesting as well.
               | Colbert interview from April 2025:
               | 
               | * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T30BF32qPgg
        
               | lelandfe wrote:
               | Thanks for the heads up, added to the list
        
           | _heimdall wrote:
           | This is one I don't really understand why the change would be
           | a huge deal in context, the framing of an article as
           | republicans sabotaging the miracle of free weather report
           | APIs is just confusing.
           | 
           | If our government were massively in debt and continuing to
           | increase the deficit, maybe I'd understand wanting to
           | consider weather report APIs as a public good worth funding
           | with tax dollars. We should be cutting everything we can to
           | avoid a complete train wreck though, why would this float to
           | the top of the list?
        
             | inetknght wrote:
             | > _We should be cutting everything we can to avoid a
             | complete train wreck though, why would this float to the
             | top of the list?_
             | 
             | It makes a lot more sense when you consider that certain
             | people think that climate change isn't real while weather
             | science supports the idea that the climate not only can
             | change but _is_ changing, and that humans are the cause of
             | it.
        
               | _heimdall wrote:
               | That has nothing to do with daily weather reports. I feel
               | you on the whole climate change debate, it just isn't
               | relevant here.
        
             | Eric_WVGG wrote:
             | First, shutting down programs like this is like leaving the
             | lights off in your home because you can't make rent of the
             | mortgage. Saving $0.025 off your energy bill is not going
             | to meaningfully help.
             | 
             | Second, it's at the top because it's a public good of
             | obviously enormous value that a common shmuck can
             | understand.
        
               | _heimdall wrote:
               | I guess I'm a common shmuck. What is the public good, and
               | specifically why is it a public good that is so difficult
               | for the free market to provide that the government needs
               | to run and subsidize it?
        
               | jjulius wrote:
               | >What is the public good...
               | 
               | ... in providing a weather forecast?
        
               | avhon1 wrote:
               | It's not that weather is difficult for markets to
               | provide. It's that it's worthwhile for the government to
               | make it freely available to everyone.
        
               | noboostforyou wrote:
               | > What is the public good
               | 
               | Accurate, scientific information to make informed
               | decisions that can affect your safety and well-being. If
               | you have to drive over a bridge or close to a body of
               | water every day but you know there is a high chance of
               | flooding tomorrow would you still travel to the same high
               | risk area?
               | 
               | What do you think is the role of government? To improve
               | the lives of its citizens should be up there, do you
               | agree?
        
               | TheOtherHobbes wrote:
               | Public services like NWS use a public service model. The
               | idea is literally to provide as comprehensive a service
               | as possible.
               | 
               | A private service will provide a _profitable_ service,
               | which will be cut-down, nickel-and-dimed, and generally
               | enshitified for profitability,
               | 
               | Financially, the relatively small cost of these public
               | services makes a negligible contribution to taxes while
               | providing huge national benefits.
        
               | 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
               | Ask all of those people who just drowned in Texas and are
               | complaining that the weather warnings should have been
               | given sooner.
        
               | _heimdall wrote:
               | Is that a solution only governments can provide? And in
               | that case was the failing at the federal or local level?
        
             | jwagenet wrote:
             | The problem is this predicted cut and others are a drop in
             | the bucket (for the government). They are a rounding error
             | compared to what's added to spending with the recent bill.
        
               | _heimdall wrote:
               | It isn't just the recent spending bill, we've been
               | racking up debt since Clinton was in office.
               | 
               | While I agree this wouldn't make a meaningful dent in the
               | deficit, every bit helps. Should we instead sit around
               | until there's political will to take on the budget of the
               | DoD, entitlements, and our debt's own interest payments?
        
             | gxs wrote:
             | Because it's not a drop in the bucket, it's not even a
             | droplet of mist
             | 
             | There are so many things to clean up before you get to this
             | 
             | Given that, Idy pose the same question to you, why
             | prioritize cutting this?
             | 
             | I would almost consider this public infrastructure and we
             | should definitely keep it
        
               | _heimdall wrote:
               | Well to start with, I'd ask if its just an easy one to
               | cut - maybe because there are alternatives or it isn't
               | really on the level of a fundamental human right.
               | 
               | Balancing our budget is going to hurt like hell and
               | everyone will bleed. That doesn't mean the answer is to
               | say fuck it and keep racking up debt.
        
               | ryoshoe wrote:
               | Given the context of the historically largest budget
               | deficit alongside decreased taxes on the wealthiest
               | Americans, it's genuinely hard to believe the goal of
               | this cut is balancing our budget
        
               | 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
               | If you care abut the deficit, then should cancel that big
               | tax cut that was just signed into law.
        
             | monkeywork wrote:
             | >This is one I don't really understand why the change would
             | be a huge deal in context
             | 
             | This is likely because you don't use the weather reports
             | for anything of value/importance in your daily life - there
             | are other professions / government departments / etc that
             | _DO_ use these reports and require them for safety reasons.
             | 
             | Just for a quick example anyone involved in aviation.
        
               | mystraline wrote:
               | NOAA is a military agency. It is not civilian, like VA,
               | ICE, or Dept of State.
               | 
               | Weather provided realtime marine, atmospheric, and solar
               | weather to better equip theatres of war and aid.
               | 
               | Without weather, soldiers conducting defense, offense, or
               | aid operations have that much less intel on making
               | decisions. The side effect is less climate change and
               | national weather reporting.
               | 
               | If anything, the stripping down soft power, intelligence,
               | science, and everything seems like a plan to turn us into
               | a 3rd world kleptocratic kakistocracy. Then again,
               | capitalism has went from innovation and creation, to
               | extraction and worsening.
               | 
               | Maybe its time to let China take the reins and show what
               | socialism can accomplish. If the videos on Xiao Hong Shu
               | (rednote) are any indication, they're doing absolutely
               | superbly.
        
               | aspenmayer wrote:
               | NOAA is under the Chamber of Commerce. The military has
               | their own meteorological capabilities from what I
               | understand, though they may also use NOAA data. I don't
               | know how you mean that NOAA is a military agency, as they
               | are not in the chain of command of any military agency or
               | group.
               | 
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Oceanic_and_Atmosp
               | her...
               | 
               | Even their officers are not armed services, though they
               | do receive a commission. I think you might be thinking of
               | something that I haven't seen or heard about, so please
               | let me know if I am wrong.
               | 
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOAA_Commissioned_Officer_C
               | orp...
        
             | bearcobra wrote:
             | Weather data is incredibly important to a huge number of
             | activities and to the general safety of the public, which
             | is why the government is providing it in the first place.
             | Debt to fund it is almost certain to economically
             | productive. The republican controlled congress is cutting
             | taxes and raising debt levels. A similar argument could be
             | made that we should continue to fund services and raise
             | taxes to reduce deficits instead
        
             | rurp wrote:
             | The same people who want to cut this service just added a
             | _million_ times that amount to the national debt. Any claim
             | that this is about saving money is transparent bullshit.
             | 
             | Free weather data has massive positive externalities. Just
             | like in so many other areas, this administration is
             | destroying a common good to benefit a handful of private
             | individuals.
        
           | vorgol wrote:
           | Project 2025 is 46% completed:
           | https://www.project2025.observer/
        
             | GlitchRider47 wrote:
             | Strange that their progress distribution chart shows a
             | lower percentage (36%) which happens to be the correct one:
             | https://www.project2025.observer/visualize/charts
        
         | EvanAnderson wrote:
         | For now.
         | 
         | https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/as-trump-slashed-weath...
        
         | fitsumbelay wrote:
         | Yep
        
         | runarb wrote:
         | The Norwegian Meteorological Institute also have free forecast
         | for any location on earth: https://developer.yr.no/featured-
         | products/forecast/
        
           | cyberax wrote:
           | They won't have access to the same primary data as the NWS.
           | Although it might be an opportunity for something like
           | PurpleAir.
        
           | aredox wrote:
           | The Norwegian meteorological Institute, as well as all
           | European meteorological agencies, shares but also rely on
           | shared data from other agencies, including NOAA. Most of the
           | Atlantic weather buoys, for example...
        
         | cmiles74 wrote:
         | AccuWeather has been trying to privatize NWS since it's
         | inception. I believe the current head of the NOAA was actually
         | the AccuWeather CEO. IMHO, it's only a matter of time before he
         | shuts off public access to NSW forecase data, no matter the
         | impact on real people and businesses (except maybe
         | AccuWeather).
         | 
         | https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/14/politics/noaa-nominee-accuwea...
        
         | Brosper wrote:
         | USA is only one country. What about the rest?
        
         | bix6 wrote:
         | NWS costs $1.3B a year and the ROI is 5-11x based on reports I
         | can find. So every $1 gives Americans $11 of value. But yeah
         | let's trash it to save money or whatever...
        
       | pastureofplenty wrote:
       | I'll just keep scraping
        
         | greenavocado wrote:
         | I can see it already:
         | 
         | In other news, AccuWeather servers overwhelmed with requests
         | after shutting down Weather API
        
           | ysavir wrote:
           | Nah. We just need one source to scrape them and make the
           | results available for others.
        
         | Retr0id wrote:
         | A while back I RE'd the accuweather mobile app and pulled out
         | the API key, it wasn't too hard.
        
       | mlhpdx wrote:
       | If you'd like a preview of what access to weather data will be
       | like (soon) just have a look at access to nautical navigation
       | charts.
        
       | andsoitis wrote:
       | How the winds are changing
        
       | donohoe wrote:
       | "AccuWeather is excited to share important updates"
       | 
       | Yes. Yes, I'm sure you are.
        
         | tailspin2019 wrote:
         | Such corporate speak reminds me of "the values of the Carphone
         | Warehouse":
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2firijxQOo
        
         | amysox wrote:
         | That's like the old saying that when a company starts its
         | message with _" In order to serve you better...",_ what they
         | really mean is _" Bend over and assume the position."_
        
       | micromacrofoot wrote:
       | the forecast calls for enshittification
        
       | firesteelrain wrote:
       | I assume AccuWeather is receiving large cloud egress bills and
       | thus needs to start charging?
        
         | michaelsshaw wrote:
         | The NWS is being gutted so Accu is preparing to rake in
         | extortionate profits off public safety information.
        
       | stego-tech wrote:
       | Serious question: what other national or global-level weather
       | services are freely available via API to end users? With
       | AccuWeather going all-in on premium access and the NWS/NOAA being
       | sabotaged, is there anywhere else with freely available high-
       | quality data out there in readily-ingestible formats?
        
         | rajh wrote:
         | In the Netherlands we have the KNMI data platform
         | (https://dataplatform.knmi.nl) and also an open source weather
         | app (https://gitlab.com/KNMI-OSS/KNMI-App).
        
           | slenk wrote:
           | I noticed that before when looking at some weather APIs. You
           | have a lot better data in Europe available
        
         | saint_yossarian wrote:
         | Here's a convenient list: https://github.com/breezy-
         | weather/breezy-weather/blob/main/d...
        
         | open-meteo wrote:
         | I've been building an open-source weather API over the past few
         | years. It pulls in data from a wide range of global and local
         | high-resolution weather models. The API is free to use without
         | an API key, though there are commercial options available. I'm
         | the sole owner behind it. No VC funding or outside backing.
         | 
         | The core tech is tuned for performance, using local gridded
         | files instead of a traditional database or response caching.
         | This efficiency is what allows it to stay free.
         | 
         | You can try it here: https://open-meteo.com
        
           | jamesblonde wrote:
           | Love open-meteo - no registration or API key required. Great
           | for tutorials. I used it my upcoming O'Reilly book- use
           | weather to predict air quality at the street level:
           | https://github.com/featurestorebook/mlfs-book/
        
           | slenk wrote:
           | I use that in HomeAssistant. Love it!
        
           | dejobaan wrote:
           | This is fantastic; thank you for it. The "try the API" page
           | is also excellent!
        
             | geoka9 wrote:
             | So true, it is so awesome. I've just replaced my weather
             | network bookmark with the open-meteo's "API Response"
             | chart. I hope open-meteo doesn't mind :)
        
           | jasonthorsness wrote:
           | Awesome, I will change https://weather.bingo to use this
           | service; the previous paid API I used was too expensive to
           | justify given I was the only real user :P.
        
           | RebeccaTheDev wrote:
           | Just wanted to say thank you for this service. I have a
           | little homebrew clock I build from a Raspberry Pi and a small
           | display in my bathroom. Below the time, it displays the
           | weather forecast for the day so I know how to dress. That
           | little clock has become an essential piece of my morning
           | routine.
           | 
           | I switched to Open Meteo a few months ago when the previous
           | API I was using quit working. It's been rock solid and such a
           | nice user experience compared to everything else I tried.
        
           | nox_pp wrote:
           | Have been meaning to look into OpenMeteo for
           | https://luxweather.com
           | 
           | We've been using OWM but the One Call API quickly gets pricey
           | when traffic spikes.
        
         | wuyishan wrote:
         | I've recently found https://open-meteo.com/ - maybe that ticks
         | some of the boxes?
        
         | Ueland wrote:
         | The Norwegian MET does, https://api.met.no/
         | 
         | They also provide yr.no which is widely used worldwide.
        
         | klinquist wrote:
         | https://pirateweather.net/en/latest/
        
       | dyeje wrote:
       | I imagine there is a lot of new pressure on public APIs now that
       | there's an explosion of vibe coded projects accessing them (some
       | probably quite haphazardly).
        
         | pmdr wrote:
         | It's probably just good old-fashioned greed. Worked for X and
         | Reddit, why wouldn't it work for them?
        
         | 0x457 wrote:
         | Uhm, having a weather api is probably the easiest thing to
         | implement because of how catchable it is. Any public api
         | accidental can be prevented by tiered rate-limiting:
         | 
         | - uber low limits for anon access
         | 
         | - low, but reasonable for register free users
         | 
         | - Up-to-you for paid users
         | 
         | You might say: well, proxies are cheaper than paid plan, and
         | solution to that - charge reasonable price.
        
         | sitzkrieg wrote:
         | you should see what happened when people finally understood
         | XMLHttpRequest!
        
       | jasonthorsness wrote:
       | I ran a weather site for a year or so (that also showed
       | YESTERDAY'S weather, that was the key feature) using visual
       | crossing's data, until someone started scraping all the cities of
       | the world every hour and running up my costs (visual crossing is
       | pay-per-data-point) so I had to shut it down.
       | 
       | It surprises me that in 2025 we can't just support global free
       | weather data as some kind of cooperative service. It's not like
       | it's high-bandwidth or even all that high-volume.
        
         | dawnerd wrote:
         | There is public free weather, for now at least, where do you
         | think the private weather companies source it from? They're
         | just repackaging it.
        
           | jasonthorsness wrote:
           | The last time I had checked (this was over a year ago) there
           | was nothing that provided world-wide data in a consistent
           | format except the paid APIs, of which only one had a good
           | historical data service.
           | 
           | I could switch my site to just use NWS and be US only I
           | suppose; better than just being completely off. Adding all
           | the weather services of every country in the world is too
           | much for me (and why I guess the paid services are value-
           | add).
        
             | Ueland wrote:
             | The Norwegian MET has had it for years, for free.
             | https://api.met.no/
             | 
             | They also provide yr.no which is widely used worldwide.
        
             | phillipseamore wrote:
             | https://open-meteo.com/
        
               | jasonthorsness wrote:
               | Looks promising, thanks!
        
         | tempestn wrote:
         | Fantastic feature btw; certainly more than once I've wished
         | weather apps/sites would show recent history.
        
         | whalesalad wrote:
         | Your statements are somewhat contradictory. You said that you
         | were being scraped so you had to shut the service down due to
         | costs... but then you also say that this not a high-bandwidth
         | or high-volume service.
        
           | jasonthorsness wrote:
           | I was the only regular user (it's basically a POC/concept
           | site), so it was extremely low volume except for the
           | scraper(s), who suddenly became high-volume. I could have
           | done more research into scraper/bot blocking but I didn't
           | have the time and needed to respond to the scrapers
           | immediately, so I pulled the plug.
           | 
           | EDIT: I have also since learned of Vercel's bot/scraper
           | blocking features so I'm also going to try turning those on
           | and see if it stops the scraping.
        
             | nox_pp wrote:
             | For https://luxweather.com I detect bots/scrapers by user
             | agent and just serve them a fake forecast, brought our bill
             | way down :)
        
               | jasonthorsness wrote:
               | Ha that's a great idea; proactive anti-bot solutions like
               | that are hilarious
        
       | mkerrigan wrote:
       | OpenWeather still has a free tier. https://openweathermap.org/
        
         | Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
         | Yup! I use it for an IRC bot that allows users to request the
         | current weather or a forecast for a location.
         | 
         | Unfortunately, the API for searching for a location is terrible
         | and often gets locations wrong.
        
       | SSJPython wrote:
       | Why is something so essential, so basic, like the weather
       | forecast being privatized? Why is everything becoming so shit?
        
         | CamperBob2 wrote:
         | Because stupid people are easy to herd to the polls.
        
           | swyx wrote:
           | because good data costs money?
           | 
           | how would you feel if you were the SWE on the other side of
           | this API and people demand it for free
        
             | Vinnl wrote:
             | Usually the opposite of privatisation is not that something
             | magically appears for free, but that it is funded by a
             | state.
        
             | monkeywork wrote:
             | There is an SWE on the other side of this API - and I
             | imagine they are enjoying a government salary and pension
             | for operating it... people accessing it for free wouldn't
             | impact them.
        
             | Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
             | This carries the same energy as arguing against "free"
             | healthcare by claiming that doctors shouldn't be expected
             | to work for free.
             | 
             | Nobody is expecting anybody to work for free. We expect
             | government to pay for it. I think you know this and pretend
             | not to for some reason.
        
         | masklinn wrote:
         | Because nothing can exist in America if middlemen don't make
         | money out of it, the more the better.
         | 
         | You can see a literal example of that thinking in the comments
         | of _heimdall for whom valuable commons are unexploited business
         | cases.
        
       | fitsumbelay wrote:
       | As @otterly already posted there has, is and will always be
       | weather.gov
       | 
       | As a matter of fact US Commerce department provides many API
       | services including free geolocation (wuuut) via census.gov among
       | so many services
       | 
       | A side note about Trump and politics/shmolitix etc: his stageshow
       | budget cuts will have short term impact but will likely be
       | repaired when the House flips and Dems make gains in the Senate
       | after the mid terms. A lot of White Americans living at or below
       | the poverty line will be hurt by the scheduled cuts and will have
       | questions n' thoughts, but man this Epstein footcannon-nuclear-
       | grenade-launcher of Trump's just might be the thing that ends
       | Republican Party's 10 year abusive relations with an objectively
       | adjudicated and multifacted criminal
        
         | mindslight wrote:
         | Have you not been paying attention for the past several
         | decades? Trump is unprecedented in audacity, crassness, and
         | degree of harm. But the overall trend is right in line with
         | what Republicans have been doing for thirty+ years (at least as
         | long as I've been paying attention). And no, the destruction
         | does not cause people to vote Democrat in response. People
         | become more desperate, more reactionary, more quick to blame
         | their fellow citizens, and more easy to lead towards supporting
         | even more destruction - this is exactly how we've arrived at
         | Trump in the first place. When the Democrats do get back in
         | office, they effectively act as controlled opposition. Even if
         | they try to undo the damage, most actions are sabotaged by a
         | few "moderates" that have been captured by the corpos just like
         | the Republicans. And then the Republican machine goes to work
         | projecting - pointing to the Democrats' failings as open
         | corruption, inability to do anything, fiscal irresponsibility
         | as price inflation finally appears from the Republicans'
         | profligate spending, etc.
         | 
         | Personally I'm not really worried about the "no more elections"
         | panic narrative, because I think the real answer is that there
         | isn't going to be much of a federal government left to take the
         | reigns of.
        
         | Applejinx wrote:
         | The scientists I know have been pretty loud about there being
         | no good way to repair what's been broken. Stuff can't just be
         | turned on again.
         | 
         | I do expect more than just flipping off a switch: at some level
         | there'll be outright sabotage, of data systems or physical
         | hardware or both, for the purposes of destroying what is being
         | made to go away.
         | 
         | This is because that's why it's being done. Budget concerns
         | were never the point. It's the wholesale destruction of
         | American soft power and indispensable systems. That's why I
         | expect physical sabotage under cover of 'decommissioning'.
        
         | jeffbee wrote:
         | White Americans have been self-sabotaging for 150 years and it
         | is fine with them, they are completely happy with this
         | situation as long as Black Americans are harmed at least as
         | much. This is the only motivating reason behind about a third
         | of the American electorate.
        
       | ChrisArchitect wrote:
       | Pirate Weather API https://pirateweather.net/en/latest/ which
       | powers Merry Sky http://merrysky.net/
        
       | skeptrune wrote:
       | Brings back good memories. One of the first things I ever built
       | was a Twitter weather bot using their free API.
        
         | pimlottc wrote:
         | I assume you meant "weather bot"
        
           | skeptrune wrote:
           | Yes lol
        
       | sitzkrieg wrote:
       | im still mad apple bought and killed darksky. ripped one of the
       | best weather apis
        
         | superxpro12 wrote:
         | Thank you for my daily trigger.... I am also still mad about
         | this.
        
       | JoshGlazebrook wrote:
       | Another one bites the dust. I've used weather underground api,
       | yahoo weather api, dark sky api, and all of them have gone from
       | free to paid (or just not public anymore) over the years.
       | Currently using pirate weather -
       | https://pirateweather.net/en/latest/
        
         | scarface_74 wrote:
         | Dark Sky was never free for unlimited use.
         | 
         | It's now Apple's WeatherKit.
         | 
         | The first 500K calls a month is free with a $99 a year Apple
         | Developer account and there is a standard REST API for none
         | Apple OS's.
        
           | kjkjadksj wrote:
           | I feel its not nearly as useful as the old darksky api. The
           | secret sauce of that software was that it combined typical
           | weather data with local reports. Afaik there is no way to
           | submit a weather report on the apple weather app. They bought
           | it for the name and to kill a competing option essentially vs
           | attempting to use what made that app actually compelling
           | compared to other weather apps.
        
             | OptionOfT wrote:
             | There actually is.
             | 
             | At the bottom - report an issue.
        
             | svarrall wrote:
             | If you scroll down on to the bottom of Apple Weather it has
             | a "Report an Issue" button which allows you to report
             | current weather conditions at your location.
             | 
             | I have no idea what happens to that data and if it
             | contributes to the report in any way.
        
           | margalabargala wrote:
           | > The first 500K calls a month is free with a $99 a year[...]
           | 
           | They may be _included_ with your $99 /year subscription, but
           | to call them "free" is like saying that the groceries I'm
           | holding are free because I just gave the cashier money.
        
             | hoosier2gator wrote:
             | I would say it's more like saying that driving on the
             | highway is free because you pay taxes. I doubt anyone is
             | buying a developer account specifically for weather API
             | calls.
        
               | margalabargala wrote:
               | Lots of people drive on highways who pay no highway
               | taxes, foreign tourists for example.
               | 
               | It's free like riding the monorail at Disney World is
               | free; included in the cost of your entry ticket, and
               | utterly inaccessible to anyone who has not paid.
        
         | ge96 wrote:
         | Is there any way people would be incentivized to setup a little
         | weather station/contribute to data and get paid. Wonder if
         | there's a model where people could make money/not game the
         | system too. It would have to be standardized/verified to be
         | accurate somehow.
        
           | wmeredith wrote:
           | > Wonder if there's a model where people could make money/not
           | game the system too.
           | 
           | We're up against the most basic of human nature here.
        
           | Aurornis wrote:
           | Blockchain people have been trying variations of this for a
           | decade. Any time you create a system that pays people for
           | data, it will be exploited to the extreme.
           | 
           | I don't think you need to incentivize people to provide
           | weather data. Just make it easy to set up a station and get a
           | lot of people interested. There are already hobby stations
           | out there and networks for them.
        
             | ge96 wrote:
             | Time series database comes in ding ding
             | 
             | Yeah I could see the hobby-drive there
        
             | noosphr wrote:
             | Blockchains have clearance rates that are a few dozen
             | orders of magnitude too slow for this. Bitcoin for example
             | clears 7 transactions per second.
        
               | Aurornis wrote:
               | Bitcoin wasn't designed for high throughput. I'm
               | referring to projects like the Helium network, which
               | rewards people for running network nodes:
               | https://www.helium.com/
               | 
               | It doesn't work as well as they wanted and it has been
               | subject to various exploits over the years from people
               | figuring out how to fake the participation to extract
               | rewards.
        
               | noosphr wrote:
               | >Bitcoin wasn't designed for high throughput
               | 
               | >>Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost
               | exclusively on financial institutions serving as trusted
               | third parties to process electronic payments. While the
               | system works well enough for most transactions, it still
               | suffers from the inherent weaknesses of the trust based
               | model. Completely non-reversible transactions are not
               | really possible, since financial institutions cannot
               | avoid mediating disputes. The cost of mediation increases
               | transaction costs, limiting the minimum practical
               | transaction size and cutting off the possibility for
               | small casual transactions
               | 
               | From the bitcoin white paper.
               | 
               | >I'm referring to projects like the Helium network, which
               | rewards people for running network nodes
               | 
               | OK, what's the clearance rate for helium?
               | 
               | Visa clears 35,000 a second.
        
               | ben_w wrote:
               | While that detail is true, the real problem is much more
               | general: you have goal x, you use some proxy y for that
               | goal, you pay people for y, they give you lots of y that
               | may end up being the exact opposite of x.
               | 
               | Famously, the British found x was "fewer cobras" and y
               | was "cobra tails", the opposite of x being "the locals
               | bred cobras to get money for cobra tails".
               | 
               | Make a citizen science weather station that's free, it's
               | all fine. Make it paid, someone's going to grab satellite
               | pics and generate from them plausible but not necessarily
               | accurate simulated weather station data for everywhere to
               | get that money.
        
               | zaphirplane wrote:
               | Incentives do work in general. Sometimes they are abused.
               | Incentives with no checks and balances are always abused.
               | I don't think the generalized problem you discuss above
               | is broadly general
        
               | squeaky-clean wrote:
               | I don't think they were saying to use blockchain to do
               | this. It's just an example that shows that if you offer
               | financial incentives in exchange for data people will
               | exploit it and gameify it. The reason blockchain
               | clearance rates are so slow is because of all the effort
               | to prevent this. You could remove PoW from bitcoin and
               | the network would be significantly faster. It would also
               | be dominated by people exploiting it.
               | 
               | It's the same thing with ad networks, most of the effort
               | goes into verifying that an ad click was legitimate and
               | not a bot. Or that classic story of when the British
               | government tried to eliminate Cobras in India by paying a
               | bounty for every dead cobra, which just led to people
               | breeding more cobras.
        
           | arghwhat wrote:
           | You need to collect data _and_ run the weather models, which
           | for good ones could require a lot of continuous compute
           | resources.
        
           | avhon1 wrote:
           | People pay to have a tempest weather station
           | 
           | https://tempest.earth/tempest-home-weather-system/
        
             | ge96 wrote:
             | interesting design, doesn't have the cliche anemometer
             | spoons
        
             | x0x0 wrote:
             | That's pretty cool, thank you for sharing.
             | 
             | Do you have any idea if you can plug this thing into a
             | public api to share?
        
               | threeio wrote:
               | https://community.home-assistant.io/t/weatherflow-
               | tempest-wh...
               | 
               | Looks like it can be done with home assistant and then
               | pushed up to collection locations, so I suspect things
               | are pretty open
        
           | WillAdams wrote:
           | Isn't that Weather Underground's schtick?
        
           | asteroidburger wrote:
           | Many people have no problem setting up a station and giving
           | away the data for free.
           | 
           | https://map.purpleair.com/
           | 
           | This is primarily for air quality by default, but you can get
           | temperature, humidity, etc as well. For each station, someone
           | paid for the hardware and is sharing the data gratis.
        
           | vlod wrote:
           | >It would have to be standardized/verified to be accurate
           | somehow.
           | 
           | You could do something that for the same zip/county,
           | aggregates the results based on a certain percentage. You
           | could weight it based on how many times a user is outside
           | this range. (e.g. bad actors)
           | 
           | I just got zigbee working in my house (SONOFF Zigbee 3.0 USB
           | Dongle Plus Gateway). Is there any recommended weather nuts
           | out there that could recommend a weather device (that they
           | like and is cool), just in case someone wants to create a
           | project and is looking for data providers.
        
           | adolph wrote:
           | There are a few models for community data
           | collection/distribution that appear reasonably successful in
           | ADS-B and bird tracking with commercial, non-commercial and
           | academic examples. The challenge is that there are hard costs
           | to collecting/persisting/distributing the data which are
           | incompatible with free (which in reality just means someone
           | else pays).
           | 
           | https://www.adsbexchange.com/how-it-works/
           | 
           | https://www.flightaware.com/adsb/
           | 
           | https://www.birdweather.com/about
           | 
           | https://ebird.org/about
        
         | kjkjadksj wrote:
         | Aren't all these services just abrogating some national weather
         | service data? Is that api exposed to the public?
        
           | jimmaswell wrote:
           | Yes, and it's a free public service as I would expect.
           | https://www.weather.gov/documentation/services-web-api
        
             | SkyeCA wrote:
             | I never considered government weather departments would
             | provide APIs for their data, but after seeing your comment
             | I went to see if Environment Canada provided one.
             | 
             | I am _very_ impressed by how how much data they provide
             | free of charge.
             | 
             | https://api.weather.gc.ca/
        
               | phillipseamore wrote:
               | They do even better: https://eccc-msc.github.io/open-
               | data/readme_en/
        
             | perfectviking wrote:
             | For now. A component of Project 2025 is to remove the
             | public access.
        
               | CyberDildonics wrote:
               | Michael Lewis' book the fifth risk talks explicitly how
               | someone with a paid weather app was put in charge of the
               | commerce department (by trump) so he could try to hide
               | public weather data but use it in his app then charge for
               | it.
        
         | squigz wrote:
         | It's almost as if APIs cost money to run?!
        
       | Havoc wrote:
       | The march towards walled gardens continues.
       | 
       | The internet as we know it (blogs etc) is going to stop existing
       | and this will just turn into an protocol layer communicating
       | between said walled gardens
       | 
       | Bit miffed that the big tech orgs basically killed something that
       | could be organic & community driven. If somehow a path could have
       | been found to maintain and possibly even scale that sort of
       | grassroot internet I think it could have turned into something
       | unimaginably awesome. Big tech actively killed that trajectory
        
         | gip wrote:
         | WalleD gardens and walleT gardens - e.g. micropayments will
         | make it possible to monetize data to the fullest and every
         | users will need a wallet to access anything fresh online. That
         | seems to be the trend, but I suspect a counter-trend will
         | emerge too.
        
         | Zenbit_UX wrote:
         | Sure Apple, fb and LinkedIn were private gardens before it was
         | cool, but there was still some incentive for some companies to
         | stay public. That is until the AI wars and scrapping the entire
         | internet constantly for training data was the norm.
        
       | lxgr wrote:
       | Semi off-topic, but does anybody know a good weather radar app
       | that has coverage outside the US (with particular interest in
       | Europe)?
       | 
       | Apple/Dark Sky seems to only cover a very limited number of
       | countries (despite many more providing radar data under open
       | access), and zoom.earth seems to be shutting down precipitation
       | radar by September.
        
         | hnburnsy wrote:
         | Windy
        
         | jonp888 wrote:
         | I use WetterOnline, it's German but I think it covers all of
         | Europe.
        
       | bhickey wrote:
       | Time to dust off CloudyFS, the first filesystem to put the clouds
       | in your files.
       | 
       | https://github.com/bhickey/cloudyfs
        
       | jvanderbot wrote:
       | Strange timing, with all the talk of NOAA cuts.
        
       | thegreatpeter wrote:
       | It is truly remarkable how some of those affluent & resourceful
       | devs in the world come here to complain about an API that now
       | requires a subscription.
       | 
       | Somebody, somewhere in the world has to build & maintain this
       | API. Somebody's job depends on it. If you use it and you find it
       | useful, you can afford to pay whatever they're willing to charge.
       | 
       | Otherwise, build & maintain your own. Make sure you never charge
       | for it!!
        
       | wild_pointer wrote:
       | https://wttr.in/ ftw
        
       | throw4847285 wrote:
       | A dark day for State College. What's next? No more Peachy Paterno
       | at the Creamery? The Waffle Shop burning down?
        
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