It amazes me that people do not seem to know this, so it bears repeating strenuously.

Without NWS there is effectively no weather data. Oh sure, you have Wunderground’s handful of private weather stations with their dodgy uncalibrated data. But anything high quality and worth using in forecasting models comes from the gubmint.

No weather data means agriculture is seriously fucked. Aviation is even more fucked. Shipping is fucked. The electricity grid is fucked. Construction, mining, sports… the list of industries that depend on accurate data and forecasting is massive.