You do need a weatherman
Yesterday, tornados touched down in St. Louis. We lived in St. Lous for 40 years before moving to New England, and in those 40 years, the closest I can recall a tornado touchdown was at Lambert-St. Louis airport.
Climate change is making for more severe weather, and DOGE has cut staff at NOAA and the NWS are making weather forecasting more problematic. From a Q&A in the Boston Globe:
“Q: How do you see the reduction in staffing and funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) affecting the ability to forecast the weather?
– Daniel Spirer, Berkshire County
“The cutting of staff and voluntary buyouts at NOAA and at the National Weather Service have been an ongoing discussion in the industry and among my peers. And quite frankly, forecasting in general has suffered because of it.
“There are two main concerns that I have. Part of the reason why the National Weather Service is so darn accurate is because of the data received from weather balloon launches that used to occur multiple times per day, shaping forecasts across the country. Many offices have dropped the frequency of launches, which opens the door for more discrepancies in forecasts. It’s always better to have more clues to solve a case than to have fewer, right?
“Then I think about areas of the country that have been hammered with severe weather since the layoffs, i.e., tornado season currently underway across the Plains, the Midwest, and the South. There has been a tremendous amount of severe weather this season, with some National Weather Service offices scrambling to keep the public notified as outbreaks occur.
“Short-staffed offices have to prioritize what gets the most attention. Do storm surveys get punted because there aren’t enough people working? What happens if staffing isn’t possible overnight? I’ve already seen initiatives shut down ahead of the hurricane season that would have resulted in better forecasting and preparedness.”
DOGE cuts hurt weather forecasting
Climate change is making for more severe weather, and DOGE has cut staff at NOAA and the NWS are making weather forecasting more problematic. From a Q&A in the Boston Globe:
“Q: How do you see the reduction in staffing and funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) affecting the ability to forecast the weather?
– Daniel Spirer, Berkshire County
“The cutting of staff and voluntary buyouts at NOAA and at the National Weather Service have been an ongoing discussion in the industry and among my peers. And quite frankly, forecasting in general has suffered because of it.
“There are two main concerns that I have. Part of the reason why the National Weather Service is so darn accurate is because of the data received from weather balloon launches that used to occur multiple times per day, shaping forecasts across the country. Many offices have dropped the frequency of launches, which opens the door for more discrepancies in forecasts. It’s always better to have more clues to solve a case than to have fewer, right?
“Then I think about areas of the country that have been hammered with severe weather since the layoffs, i.e., tornado season currently underway across the Plains, the Midwest, and the South. There has been a tremendous amount of severe weather this season, with some National Weather Service offices scrambling to keep the public notified as outbreaks occur.
“Short-staffed offices have to prioritize what gets the most attention. Do storm surveys get punted because there aren’t enough people working? What happens if staffing isn’t possible overnight? I’ve already seen initiatives shut down ahead of the hurricane season that would have resulted in better forecasting and preparedness.”
DOGE cuts hurt weather forecasting
Those balloon launches are pretty amazing if you’ve ever seen one. They’re also amazingly useful and informative. Back in the late 1980s, I worked with the NCAR dataset, and I was surprised to find that they had decades of data from twice daily launches on a world wide grid. It even included the USSR and Mao’s China.