I am glad the government is producing the forecasts. Sounds to me like your
just ****ed because they are giving tax payers something for free that you
want to charge them for. If your product is so much better and someone has
a real need for it, they will buy it. If not I guess the product isn't
worth the cost.

-JATO
http://jatobservatory.org


On Sat, 23 Apr 2005 10:06:50 -0500, "David Salmon"
wrote:

James, it so hard to tell what you are rambling about, but let me be
perfectly clear for you and anybody else;

My interest in separating government/university forecasts from private
forecasts is entirely for value-added products. Government (NWS) and
universities can forecast the wind, forecast the temperature, forecast
clouds, forecast the precipitation/type, but apart from life and limb
forecast, stay away from producing "results" for commercial endeavors! I
have no interest in producing a wind product for the Indian Ocean. If there
is some commercial application of such a forecast, and where a private
company is/can do it, it should be left to them.

I do have considerable expertise in producing heating and cooling demand
forecast for the U.S. with regional and national population-weighted values,
calculated each business day. NWS had a tame, once-per-week version of that
long ago and that was okay. However, more recently they began a daily
product as well, and then they have added some derivatives to their
otherwise generic 6- to 10-day product too; that I will contend, oversteps
their bounds. I'm more than willing to go head-to-head with NWS or a
university or any other private company on a generic 6- to 10-day (which I
also do), but the public funded folks should stay out of the "commercial"
results/value-added portion.

I have considerable expertise in producing soil moisture products and other
soil condition derivatives. NWS has gradually encroached on that arena too.
I still believe my product to be superior to theirs (and to other privates'
I have seen) especially as it relates to agriculture, but it is a hard sell
when a potential customer can get something mediocre from NWS or a
university for free vs. paying a modest price for the very best. My
day-to-day efforts in deriving my soil products would be so much easier if
NWS (and their little buddies at the FAA) would just concentrate on telling
me how much precipitation has occurred! If they would do their jobs they
have been given, they would have some much time on their hands to dream up
ways of cutting my (and my fellow private meteorologists') throat(s).

David Salmon