[wxqc] NWS Data Availability/Weather Underground

[Evan Bookbinder]

As many of you know, your data is being used in many capacities, 
including being ingested at the National Weather Service.

While doing a search today I came across the Weather Underground/Google 
site, which I'm sure many of you are quite familiar with. I had 
previously not looked at this site in much detail, figuring it wasn't 
much beyond the mapping and graphic of data we already had at our disposal.

However, to my amazement, there are a number of sites that are reporting 
to wunderground, but not elsewhere. I was under the impression that all 
sites shown here were sending their data through MADIS by way of the 
APRS/CWOP network, but this obviously isn't the case.

Russ, Dave, etc... obviously the NWS is trying to acquire *all* 
available mesonet data, and I thought we were doing so, but apparently 
this isn't the case. There is no wunderground station listing/dataset 
available through MADIS, so I'm very concerned that a.) We're not 
receiving a lot of available data and b.) station owners don't know that 
sending data solely to wunderground isn't getting to the NWS.

Comments/help greatly appreciated.

Evan
WFO Kansas City/Pleasant Hill, MO