NOAA: A Remarkable Example of Chutzpah

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Dr. Richard Spinrad

Just-departed NOAA administrator Dr. Richard Spinrad has posted a piece on his LinkedIn account pertaining to NOAA and the Trump Administration’s ongoing efforts to tackle America’s $37 trillion-dollar deficit. His comments are reproduced in their entirety below. To my knowledge, so far, no cuts to weather forecasting or NOAA have been proposed by Elon Musk's DOGE or President Trump nor has the "elimination" of NOAA been proposed. 

 

Dr. Spinrad writes: Before modern NOAA existed … an unforecasted hurricane hit Galveston in 1900 destroying the city and killing about 8,000 people. He went on to write -- with remarkable chutzpah -- So go ahead Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump, fire those NOAA employees and cut the agency’s budget, but have the guts to stand up and take the hit for the deaths and destruction that result…”

 

My reply: In 2011, 41 years after NOAA was created, a wrongly-forecast EF-5 tornado struck the city of Joplin, Missouri, killing 161 people. It was the worst single-fatality death toll since government tornado warnings began in the 1950's. Rather than NOAA having the “guts to stand up and take the hit” for the remarkably bad tornado warnings that day, NOAA covered it up and later said terrible things about those who correctly warned of the tornado and brought the agency’s failure to light. Since Joplin, NOAA/NWS tornado warnings – according to NOAA’s own statistics (viewable here) – have regressed to 1994’s level in quality. That was before we had Doppler radar. 

 

In addition to issues with tornado warnings, NOAA’s National Weather Service was late forecasting the catastrophic flooding in the southern Appalachians due to Hurricane Helene which killed 140+ and caused uncounted billions in damage. It was so resource-starved under Dr. Spinrad’s leadership, that it could not and cannot even launch its full complement of daily weather balloons! 


Meanwhile, NOAA was giving out taxpayer dollars in amounts as much as a grant of $68 million for “Maine Won’t Wait” (climate program) and other lavish sums for DEI and other politically-related causes that likely would not sit well with most of the taxpaying public. 


Considering Dr. Spinrad's term at NOAA and the National Weather Service's performance during the same, he would be well advised to stay out of this issue. 




Dr. Spinrad's essay:




 

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