Hurricanes are steered by the winds around them. Wind patterns detected today over the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains – places like Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska and South Dakota – give forecasters clues to the winds that will be likely along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts in the days ahead.
Satellites can’t take direct measurements, so to measure these winds, scientists rely on weather balloons. That data is essential both for forecasts and to calibrate the complicated formulas forecasters use to make estimates from satellite data.
That move and other cuts and threatened cuts at NOAA have raised red flags for forecasters across the country and around the world.
Forecasters everywhere, from TV to private companies, rely on NOAA’s data to do their jobs. Much of that data would be extremely expensive if not impossible to replicate.
Under normal circumstances, weather balloons are released from around 900 locations around the world at 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Eastern time every day. While the loss of just 12 of these profiles may not seem significant, small amounts of missing data can lead to big forecast errors.
And it’s not just the relatively small number of launches that are lost, but the locations are quite critical for analysis of the air masses moving over CONUS, and their subsequent steering impacts on storms in the Atlantic or the GULF OF MEXICO.
Question; what does every government organisation do when cuts are mandated by a supposedly hostile administration?
Answer; ostentatiously cut some critical front-line service, rather than shiny-bum administrators filling non-essential roles, so that media articles can tug the heartstrings of the public by pleading on behalf of the selfless service provided by dedicated staff sacrificing themselves in their pursuit of their essential service launching balloons in the bitter cold so that we can all be safer in our cities.
Whilst I congratulate NOAA for torturing some data back to 1990 to extract a quantifiable improvement in their forecasts, and I look forward to similar reports on performance elsewhere particularly seasonal climate forecasts and their assiduous data-free guesses as to the climate at century’s end, I doubt we will hear a full set of performance figures which may be less than glowing.
I suspect we will later learn that NOAA, as with all such organisations, got an instruction to save costs perhaps by eliminating DEI staffing and decided to show off a bit as to how highly they are regarded by the public by crying poor and bleating about how such cuts to vital operational services were mandated by a heartless administration.
I base my predictions on experience especially Australia’s own Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) which does exactly the same, expending more effort in retrospective, unvalidated revisions of past climate in order to create the impression of a catastrophically boiling world, than it does in evaluating its own questionable forecast performance.
The mandate was actually to just lay off most, if not all of the probationary workforce, indiscriminately. I’m not a fan of big government by any means, but this was the move in a number other sectors, and I’d say this was an objectively dumb move, seeing who was classified as probationary.
Your non-argument seems to be; NOAA has done magnificent work and undoubtedly saved lives so it deserves an unlimited budget.
Have I got that right? Can this organisation, probably the most luxuriously funded of its type on earth, not do its job with a little belt tightening? Do you understand that USA cannot continue spending more than it earns. Spending has to be reined in.
When times are tough and you need to save money in your personal life, do you flip the breakers off in your house in self imposed rolling blackouts or do you stop going out to eat? Do you save money on gas by only driving with the windows down and AC off, or cutback on little treats at Starbucks?
If you look at a lot of the products NOAA puts out it’s apparent they are already operating on a relatively shoestring budget, Why try to squeeze blood from a turnip.
Almost certainly there’s money that could be cut from NOAA’s budget without effecting the accuracy of weather forecasts. DOGE however fired the NOAA employees that launch weather balloons.
That’s a core function. There’s not a way to put a positive spin on that one.
That is a well known tactic to have private interests take over government agencies. Slowly strangle them and make them less able to function. Over time people will get frustrated with the agency and an investment group or hedge fund will “offer” to take over the agency and make everything good again. Of course they will be subsidized by the taxpayers. This is being done with the USPS now. A logistics company head was installed as Postmaster General in 2020. In the name of efficiency he started closing mail centers, making other cuts and people are now complaining more and more about the service. Soon the public will be fine with FedEx or Amazon taking over and the price increases to follow along with taxpayer subsidies guaranteeing a profit or the cost will be much higher. See the Pentagon for an example. Over 50% of the budget goes out the door to contractors that make a nice safe taxpayer supplied profit because the Pentagon refuses to complete an audit as required by law.
The new Postmaster oddly enough is on the board of directors of Fedex
There is absolutely fat to be trimmed, but they didnt trim the fat, they indiscriminately drilled core samples in a live cow. Instead of looking for fat, they fired anyone they could, being probationary employees. There were entire NWS feild offices left unmanned as a result. It wasnt just low level new guys, anyone who has been promoted or changed jobs.
So these were irreplaceable people? Nobody else can possibly launch a balloon?
No such thing.
You are swallowing the media hype. The management can fix it - should have done it by now if they are any good. They just want (and got) your sympathy vote.
I’m sure they’ll adjust.
In the meantime the interest alone on US federal debt is over a trillion dollars per year. Don’t you wish you had that to waste on NOAA? And DOGE seems to be finding federal funds wasted everywhere they look. Don’t you want them to keep doing that? $160 billion is such a small amount of savings for half a dozen guys in 100 days.
Stop sweating the small stuff. Let managers manage on their new budget.
BTW can you possibly imagine why cutting staff started with probationaries? I can. And how come probationaries were doing such important, irreplaceable jobs?
Say your second mate had been on the vessel 3 years, and just got promoted to C/M. She would now be probationary as C/M, and laid off, leaving you worse than when you started. No 2nd mate and no C/M.
“why don’t we just cut the 3rd mate? surely we can cover the watches and find someone else to count fire extinguishers, I mean the ATBs manage after all…”
You would work it out if the 3rd mate dropped dead mid ocean, wouldn’t you? Or do you declare Mayday, Mayday, Mayday - we’re bereft here in mid ocean until you fly in a new one? We don’t know what to do!!
