> stations in remote places all over the country

s/country/world/

There are many large projects to collect this information ranging from extremely specialized satellites to networks of ocean buoys. It turns out that weather is a global phenomenon and warming seas on the other side of the planet affect wherever you are.

You're not wrong, but I would like to point out that there is also the Civilian Weather Observer Program (CWOP) that is fed by a lot of private weather stations (the kind you can buy at Walmart of Amazon and put at your house). I believe the data is aggregated and averaged to account for variations in installation deficiencies, and used to inform/enhance the government maintained data feeds.