Who Owns The Weather?

Barry Myers, President Trump’s pick to lead the agency responsible for weather predictions, doesn’t want the government to compete with commercial forecasting companies. Like his own

- Devin Leonard And Brian K. Sullivan

In 2005 a representative of AccuWeather, the commercial forecasting company, visited the office of then-U.S. Senator Rick Santorum. It might have been Joel Myers, AccuWeather’s founder, or his brother Barry Lee Myers, the company’s general counsel. Santorum can’t remember, even though they look nothing alike: Joel is thin, with wavy black hair and Clark Kent glasses; Barry, stocky with thinning brown hair, is the sharper dresser. Still, neither brother would have been a stranger. AccuWeather Inc. is based in State College, Pa., and Santorum, a Pennsylvania Republican, had known the two for years through politics and Penn State University’s alumni network. “If you’re a Penn Stater, you know Joel and Barry Myers,” Santorum says.

What Santorum does recall about the meeting is that his visitor had a gripe about the National Weather Service. The NWS was giving away forecasts on its website, radio stations, and elsewhere, when businesses such as AccuWeather charged its clients for theirs—never mind that AccuWeather relied on the service’s free data to formulate its own predictions. Santorum agreed that commercial weather companies deserved protection. That year he introduced a bill calling for the NWS to issue forecasts via “data portals designed for volume access by commercial providers.” Critics said the NWS would have been barred from making any public predictions beyond severe storm warnings, which private forecasters didn’t want to be responsible for. Bob Ryan, a veteran TV meteorologist, says, “A lot of people were very concerned. They said, ‘AccuWeather wants to take over the weather service.’” The legislation died in committee.