There's been plenty of talk lately in our nation's capital about budgets, so I thought it would be interesting to take a look at what kind of dollars go to the National Weather Service, the federal agency that provides weather and climate forecasts and warnings.

The total U.S. Budget for fiscal year 2002 will be about $2 trillion dollars. Of that, about $3 billion - less than two-tenths of one percent - will go to NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the Weather Service. NOAA also maintains an Ocean Service, a Marine Fisheries Service, a Satellite Service, and an Office of Research, to name a few. So of NOAA's $3 billion allotment, only about $720 million goes to the National Weather Service - that works out to a little more than $2.50 per American citizen per year.

For that investment, you get weather, water, and climate forecasts and warnings nationwide, along with the weather observations and computer modeling data on which those forecasts are based. Plus, many companies in the private sector depend almost totally on National Weather Service products - as an example, there would be no Weather Channel without information collected, processed and disseminated by the National Weather Service.