Project 2025 Wants You to Pay for Your Weather Forecast

Do you feel like things just keep getting more expensive? Well, you could be adding your daily weather forecasts to the list of expenses pretty soon if Project 2025 had its way. In layman’s terms, Project 2025 is a collection of conservative policy recommendations spearheaded by The Heritage Foundation. Its over 900-page policy document called “Mandate for Leadership” outlines its plans for the National Weather Service and other areas of government, such as the Department of Education, Department of Health and Human Services, and public transport. If Trump is re-elected in 2024, we could see some of these policies go into effect at a rapid pace. According to project2025.org, “The Trump administration relied heavily on Heritage’s ‘Mandate’ for policy guidance, embracing nearly two-thirds of Heritage’s proposals within just one year in office.”

Why does Project 2025 want you to pay for your daily weather forecast? Because its creators want to privatize weather forecasting altogether. There are a few reasons why this could benefit them, like creating profit for the private weather forecast company AccuWeather, which would then use data to provide a weather forecast to anyone willing to pay for it. Another reason could be to halt scientific research into climate change as Project 2025 believes that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Weather Service are “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry” and “harmful to future U.S. prosperity”, according to Chapter 21 of the “Mandate For Leadership”. Basically, by halting research, corporations—like the fossil-fuel companies that provide funding to the Heritage Foundation—can profit more by not having to follow environmental regulations that Project 2025 feels are invalidated.

It should be noted that AccuWeather is distancing themselves from Project 2025, claiming that they do not agree with the views outlined in Project 2025 specific to weather.

According to AccuWeather’s Chief Executive Officer, Steven R. Smith, “AccuWeather does not agree with the view, and AccuWeather has not suggested, that the National Weather Service (NWS) should fully commercialize its operations. The authors of ‘Project 2025’ used us as an example of forecasts and warnings provided by private sector companies without the knowledge or permission of AccuWeather.” He went on to explain ““AccuWeather is extremely proud of our track record of Superior Accuracy, but it has never been our goal to take over the provision of all weather information. We recognize there are many sources for weather in today’s digital world. Importantly, not all sources provide equal value”.

So, what does this mean for snowboarders, skiers, mountain bikers, and other outdoor recreationists? If these changes are implemented, it is likely we will have to pay for our daily weather forecasts from companies like AccuWeather, which will put together their forecasts largely from data collected by the National Weather Service. So you’ll essentially be paying for the same forecast you received before because the National Weather Service won’t be allowed to provide it for free. One could also surmise that point forecasts, which we rely heavily on for recreating in remote locations and are currently available for free on NOAA’s website, may be harder to come by under these changes. As a backcountry split board guide, I not only use this information to know what kind of weather I will be dealing with but also how it will affect the snowpack and, ultimately, avalanche conditions on a daily basis. You also probably won’t receive severe weather warnings such as tornado, hurricane, heat, and heavy snow warnings unless you pay for it, likely a subscription with a private weather company.

By eliminating research into climate change, we will probably see fewer environmental regulations imposed on big corporations and, in turn, more rapid climate change. That means less snow on this planet, a hot (or should we say cold) commodity that is already limited and dwindling.

Project 2025 also calls for eliminating the United States’ partnership with the World Meteorological Organization. This would seriously limit the collaboration of countries on weather forecasting and reduce, if not extinguish, the U.S.’ access to other countries’ weather models. It is important to look at several models when predicting weather, a great example being Hurricane Sandy back in 2012. While American models predicted it would not hit, the European model correctly predicted that it would indeed land in New Jersey. Having access to this information allowed Americans to prepare for the natural disaster that lay ahead.

The goal of Project 2025 is not to do away with NOAA and the National Weather Service entirely, however. Most private weather companies rely heavily on data provided by these agencies. According to the Project 2025 chapter written by Thomas F. Gilman, Trump’s 2019 appointee for chief financial officer and assistant secretary for administration at the Department of Commerce, they want to “Ensure Appointees [of NOAA and the NWS] Agree with Administration Aims.” They are proposing to replace appointed roles at these agencies with Trump loyalists.

If Project 2025 is successful, we will soon be forking over cash just to know whether there is going to be lightning when we summit that peak we’ve been drooling over for weeks. Additionally, it will become increasingly difficult to ensure companies are doing all they can to reduce harmful environmental impacts. Not to mention, if businesses such as flood insurance companies fund our private weather companies, conflicts of interest will just be waiting to happen, resulting in false information with nowhere to turn to verify its legitimacy.

The weather-related issues really only scratch the surface of what Project 2025 is proposing and capable of. The project also proposes to make radical changes in the Department of Education, essentially privatizing education wholly as well, and to remove abortion as a health care service. It also proposes to ban emergency contraceptives, institute a Muslim travel ban, and many more ultra-conservative ideas. At over 900 pages, there is a lot to digest in the “Mandate for Leadership,” and most citizens understandably won’t go through that many pages with a fine-tooth comb–something the folks at Project 2025 are likely counting on.