Excellent said, Jim. May I add only one thing to this. Several states include TC (temperature in �C) in their hourly reports. For an example of this, look at the Seattle's office of the NWS: http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/getproduct.pl?SEASEASWRWA. Most of these states seem to be confined to the U.S.-Canadian border.
Cheers, Nikolay Vancouver, B.C., Canada -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of James R. Frysinger Sent: Sunday, 8 September 2002 13.42 To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:22144] Re: National Weather Service: temperature in Celsius Actually, The NWS is quite a bit more metric than their public products would seem to indicate. The NWS, some years ago, was told that it had to make its products commercially available as a means of defraying costs. So they have contracts with various companies to provide them with meteorological data. They also provide much the same product to the public for free, but often delayed (perhaps 15 to 20 minutes) to give their paying customers a head start. Of course, forecasts that deal with matters of safety are immediately released to the public and are not delayed. Hence, being a customer-oriented service, the NWS puts a non-metric face on much of their data to appeal to the greater public. In the U.S., this public is used to non-metric units. But behind the scenes, the NWS is working with data that is collected, for the most part, in metric units and most of that is SI. A couple of years ago, NOAA and NWS headquarters required all local NWS stations to adopt the same web page format. The thought here was that whether you went to one site's page or another (say, for trip planning purposes) you as the user should expect to find the same type of information in the same spot on the page set. Thus it would be most effective now, I think, to appeal to the NWS at the Headquarters level. Here are two links that might prove useful: questions and comments: http://www.nws.noaa.gov/feedback.shtml#feedback webpage formats and information: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] A request to have them provide only metric information at this time would probably not get far. A request to provide metric information alongside non-metric information might stand a decent chance. One can always pass comments on to local Forecast Service Offices, too. Simultaneous and congruent appeals to local and to headquarters offices will have a synergistic effect. I think that reasonable grounds for appeal for at least parallel metric information might include: - seamless comparison with Mexican, Canadian, and other travel destinations, - products more palatable to people from outside the U.S., thus helping tourism and trade, - the educational value it would provide in acclimating the public to SI units used in meteorology, - the Omnibus Act amendment and Executive Order requiring federal metrication, and - your personal desires. If the USMA members and list users (would that all the latter were members!) want to do something proactive in lieu of tracking the value of the euro or arguing about spelling of the meter, then this might be a nice place to do something effective and something that would help metricate the U.S. Yes, I periodically do my part in trying to get NWS products to include metric information. Jim [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > I notice that the National Weather Service is mostly in Fahrenheit. > Given that it is a Federal agency, do you think that it could be > persuaded to do more in Celsius? > > http://www.nws.noaa.gov/ > > -- > Terry Simpson > Human Factors Consultant > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > www.connected-systems.com > Phone: +44 7850 511794 -- Metric Methods(SM) "Don't be late to metricate!" James R. Frysinger, LCAMS http://www.metricmethods.com/ 10 Captiva Row e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Charleston, SC 29407 phone: 843.225.6789
