The federal government has been tracking the weather for more than 150 years. Yet over the last few decades, the rise of the Internet and big tech have made weather forecasting a more crowded space. Today on the show: the value of an accurate forecast and the debate over who should control the data. Related stories:Hazard maps: The curse of knowledge (Apple / Spotify) Should we invest more in weather forecasting? After a year of deadly weather, cities look to private forecasters to save lives For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
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Adrienne Ma, what is an app on your phone that you use every single day?
Like besides the text messaging app?
Yeah.
Or like Candy Crush or whatever.
I would have to say the weather app is like the first thing that I open in the morning.
Me too.
Now here's another question.
Do you ever think about where the weather forecast on your phone comes from?
You know, until very, very recently, I had not thought about this at all.
I just assumed like somebody was beaming it to me from a satellite somewhere.
Yeah, I never really thought about this either until I started using a specific weather app on my phone.
The app lets me toggle between almost a dozen forecasting sources and confession.
Sometime if I'm hoping for a particular forecast, I'll just shop around in the app until I get the forecast that I want.
You're like, oh, it's going to rain today.
Or is it?
Or is it?
I guess this just goes to show how much access we have to weather information these days.
Weather forecasting has gotten a lot more accurate in the last few decades.
It's a multibillion dollar industry.