A Primer on NWS and Its Future, Updated

The amount of garbage being written the last 36 hours regarding the National Weather Service (NWS) would overflow 50 landfills. I would like to clarify all of this so that reasonable decisions, consistent with the public good, can be made. Mr. Ramsey is entitled to his opinion but nothing that has occurred, so far, will prevent the NWS from issuing tornado (and other) warnings of the quality (not very good) that they were issuing last week and last year. 

When I've been around Al, he seems like a nice guy but isn't a 
meteorologist nor an expert as to how all of this works. 

NOAA? Lots to Cut

                    

Before going further: the parent agency of the NWS, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is loaded with fat and with money being spent on things outside of its mission. 

Example from this week:

The grants to Ocean Conservancy came from NOAA. 

In addition to questionable grants, NOAA's "Billion Dollar Disaster" product is pure propaganda (see: 

here and here, the latter a now peer-reviewed paper). Many are -- with reason -- suspicious of its climate data "adjustments."

So, NOAA can safely be cut. Most of the money should go to the National Weather Service and some back to the U.S. Treasury. 

The National Weather Service Cannot Continue As it Has!

While the NWS is resourced-starved, the National Weather Service is also a real mess and for reasons beyond finances. I don't have time or space to recount (for the umpteenth time) all of the issues but they can be summarized with one statement:

National Weather Service tornado warnings since 2010

have regressed to 1994 (pre-Doppler) levels of accuracy. 

Unfortunately, it isn't just tornado warnings. The NWS was too late forecasting the catastrophic Helene flooding in the southern Appalachians and in far too many other cases. This is scientific fiasco of the highest degree. For the safety and welfare of our nation, it cannot be allowed to continue!

I outline what I believe to be the solution in a three-part series here, here and here. The third part is a description of how a -- also desperately needed -- National Disaster Review Board (NDRB) will function. It will be modeled after the hugely successful National Transportation Safety Board. 

As disasters become ever more expensive, a dysfunctional National Weather Service that cannot even afford to launch all of its weather balloons.... simply cannot be allowed to continue. Money spent on the NWS is an outstanding investment, not even counting the countless lives saved.

Can't the Private Sector Do It?

Right now, the NWS forecasts and issues storm warnings for the public-at-large and for other federal government agencies. Private sector companies issue B2B forecasts and warnings that were twice as accurate as those from the NWS. The public-private system we now have works very well. 

Could a private sector company issue tornado warnings for the public? Yes, but it is a bad idea for many reasons (which I won't go into, again, here). 

You can benefit from AccuWeather with their free app that gets you critical warnings from the NWS faster than other methods. That saved lives earlier this month. 

Congress and the Office of Management and Budget cannot fix this because they don't how any of this works. If you want it to stop, please cease complaining and write some letters via their web pages!

Update at 6:50pm:

As of this afternoon, the Secretary of Commerce just granted a waiver for all NWS employees in job series 1340 (meteorology), 856 (electronics technicians, fixing computers and radars), 2210 (information technology), and 1315 (hydrology). Any MISSION-CRITICAL probationary firing in those series is a mistake and they're working on fixing. Some job series DID NOT get waived, such as 1301 (physical scientist, people who work at HQ, researchers). It is frustrating and sad for them, but they aren't considered "essential" during a lapse in appropriations.

The RIF is probably coming, but again most field offices are excepted (common term usage "essential") and it's less likely we'll be impacted. The more likely issue is the reduction in real estate footprint, so we'll have to see if they have to close some offices down the road.

But in this case, the fearmongering media reports about a 10% cut across NOAA were just plain wrong. And many NWS forecasters fell for it too.

I feel badly for the probationary employees who were let go, and for the ones who were stressed waiting to find out, but I sure wish someone, ANYONE had cares just a SMIDGE as much for those of us who faced Biden's EO14043. They WANTED us fired back then. No one cared about impacts to the mission if we lost people then. No one cared about our lives. Nope, it was about "health and safety"...and they all still got covid.  But I'm not bitter. We were told (and I have screenshots) that we were part of the executive branch, the president had the right to require it of us or we could find employment elsewhere.

Keep up the good work!