Hurricane Sandy turned west in 2012 before making landfall in New Jersey. Without microwave sensor data, forecasters would have called for the storm to make landfall 24 hours later than it did and to strike Maine.

Less than a week before a Federal Communications Commission auction of radio frequency spectrum for 5G, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai clearly expressed impatience with the weather community’s ongoing concerns about interference and requests to modify the U.S. government’s position.

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Debra Werner is a correspondent for SpaceNews based in San Francisco. Debra earned a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s degree in Journalism from Northwestern University. She is a recipient...