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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Bandwidth Limits at NWS (National Weather Service) Could Hobble Our Weather Apps:

The National Weather Service's data budget is hitting a ceiling, and it apparently doesn't have the money to fix the situation. Now, the agency is considering throttling users who access its essential forecast data.

In a notice dated Nov. 18, 2020, the NWS said that it is seeking public comment on a proposal to impose data limits on users who access its wide range of public web services. "As demand for data continues to grow across NCEP websites, we are proposing to put new limits into place to safeguard our web services," the memo says. "The frequency of how often these websites are accessed by the public has created limitations and infrastructure constraints."

[...] If nothing else, the data limits could cause services that rely on NWS data, like many smartphone weather apps, to be hours behind the real-time measurements they've been accustomed to accessing. Another possibility is that services switch to gathering information from competing agencies around the globe like the UK Met Office and ECMWF. But services that aggregate data from multiple agencies would be losing out. What's more, it seems that this issue would be really cheap to fix.

The agency held a public hearing on Tuesday (you can watch the archive here, but you have to register). Answering user-submitted questions, officials said that the agency has estimated an expansion of broadband capacity at NWS would only cost $1.5 million.

Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell sits on the committee that oversees the agency's budget, and she told the Post that she thinks she could find support among her colleagues to make up for the budget shortfall. "Telling people to limit their use of this critical data is not an acceptable answer," Cantwell said.

So, how much does AccuWeather pay for that NWS data?

Original Submission