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National Weather Service Provides Forecasts for Price of Cup of Coffee

Douglas A. McIntyre

Published: April 20, 2016 6:37 am

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 10:35 am

The National Weather Service (NWS) decided to justify the costs of its operations by comparing them to the price of a cup of a “special coffee drink.” One has to wonder why the NWS has to make that case at all. Maybe it is a defense or a worry about whether Congress will chop some of its funding. Or it just wants the public to appreciate what it does, even if its operations are expensive.

The NWS, however, has prominently posted the cost benefit of its services:

For about $3 — the cost of your favorite specialty coffee drink — NWS provides each person in the U.S. with timely and accurate basic weather, water, and climate forecasts and information, as well as life-saving watches and warnings when severe weather strikes for an entire year.

Its management makes the case that the public should consider information from weather that has inconvenient consequences and that sometimes takes lives.

Additionally, the NWS decided the $3 cup of coffee is not an adequate defense for its existence. Management makes another argument, also prominently posted:

Each year, the United States averages some 10,000 thunderstorms, 5,000 floods, 1,300 tornadoes and 2 Atlantic hurricanes, as well as widespread droughts and wildfires. Weather, water and climate events, cause an average of approximately 650 deaths and $15 billion in damage per year and are responsible for some 90 percent of all presidentially-declared disasters. About one-third of the U.S. economy – some $3 trillion – is sensitive to weather and climate. National Weather Service (NWS) provides weather, hydrologic, and climate forecasts and warnings for the United States, its territories, adjacent waters and ocean areas, for the protection of life and property and the enhancement of the national economy.

The costs to cover the NWS seem cheap on that basis. Its management obviously feels it has to defend what is already clearly an important set of functions.