Weather Storm writes "Weather break* from scads* of retired weather stations are being used for weather forecasting by several private and governance agencies, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the agency of Homeland Security (DHS). The ham radio Weather Observation Program (CWOP) was created by a few amateur radio operators experimenting with reporting weather data with packet radios, but it has expanded to include Internet-only weather stations as well. As of September 2007, nearly 5,000 stations worldwide reported weather data regularly to CWOP's FindU database. The weather data is forwarded every 15 minutes to NOAA's Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System (MADIS), checked for temporary and spatial consistency, than utilized by e-banking brain* forecast models and internal forecast verification programs. In a Febuary 2007 report (PDF) DHS listed CWOP as a national assets to the 'BioWatch' Network, stating that data from personal weather stations could be useful in weather forecasts for hazardous releases. In 2007, the FindU server received 422,262,687 weather reports which is a 29.5% increase over 2006." The personal weather stations certainly come in stylish shapes.

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