Breaking News: National Weather Service to Further Cut Weather Balloon Network
In another round of what I believe is "malicious compliance," the National Weather Service (NWS) is going to further cut back the vital weather balloon network. And, I'm told, more balloon cuts are on the way.
Denver and Chatham (MA) have stopped launching balloons completely, the latter station has closed completely. The station in Alaska is now one per day as are all of the X's, effective immediately.
The NWS was -- unnecessarily -- cutting the network before President Trump was sworn in (circles). Now, they cutting more of the network back to, evidently, generate more media outrage and put more pressure on the Trump Administration. I say that because, according my sources (and I have several), not all of these offices have lost people compared to 30 days ago. They are creating a pressure campaign as we are going into the meat of tornado season and hurricane season is immediately thereafter.
Denver and Chatham (MA) have stopped launching balloons completely, the latter station has closed completely. The station in Alaska is now one per day as are all of the X's, effective immediately.
A Dangerous Game!
Russia has cut its network back to once per day and Canada and Mexico have closed a number of weather balloon stations completely. The Europeans (home to the world's #1 weather forecasting model, the NWS's has dropped to, at best, #4) have done the work and found these cuts have already caused a deterioration of the quality of weather forecasts worldwide. These U.S. cutbacks will make medium to long-term forecasting (4-10 days) worse worldwide and will make short-term forecasting worse in the United States.
The National Weather Service is playing an extremely dangerous game! With Canada and Mexico having already cut their weather balloon launches, we risk President Trump or some other politician saying, "Our neighbors have done fine with once/day and I haven't noticed any difference with my local forecast, so let's save the money and make it permanent," which will give Trump or future administrations the leverage to cut the NWS even further!
As we have documented over and over, the NWS's tornado warnings have seriously deteriorated since 2010. I would be willing to bet that when there is an unwarned tornado that causes deaths, it will be blamed on the cutbacks rather than the serious issues within the NWS. The management of NWS and NOAA is playing games with the safety of the people of the U.S. I've never -- not once -- called for the privatization of the National Weather Service. It is an essential public good. But, if this is the way the NWS is going to run its affairs, we would be better off it is privatized.
Keep in mind, the U.S. Senate has not taken up the nomination of Neil Jacobs to be the administrator of NOAA. I believe they want to keep the position open because they know he would put an end to this, quickly and their "never let a crisis go to waste (someone getting killed in an unwarned tornado) opportunity would pass. So, I am calling for Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick step in and to a stop to this -- immediately!
This is bizarre. If the NWS is indeed playing politics they should cease immediately as there is no room for that in a public safety agency (picture your law enforcement and fire departments doing that). I routinely hand-analyze upper air maps so this hot mess is especially troubling to me.
ReplyDeleteI know from the the Denver/Boulder MIC that they used a contractor for the upper air site. More than two years ago they lost their source of helium. During the wait the contractor's certification lapsed and apparently no one felt a recert was necessary. The impression I got was the site was permanently dead. Tallahassee has been off-line for over two years with exceptions for some severe weather and hurricanes. I never could learn what was going on there. Chatham, MA seemed to be just a special-use site for Nor'easters and the like. That has always been the times I have seen them report over many years.
From this week's announcement on the upper air sites you listed here, Omaha and Rapid City have suspended ops completely for the time being and the rest are once-a-day. What that means in terms of which time is chosen for the once-a-day sites is anyone's guess. If Albany and Gray are still suspended that means we are now down SIX regular sites with another SIX reduced. That is a potential for 12 total sites that may not report at a given time.
It is also interesting that all of the upper air sites affected by this week's announcement are in NWS Central Region and largely clustered from Wyoming and Colorado into South Dakota and Nebraska. Let's just say it deserves the wonky eye at the very least.
NWS does not seem to be in anymore of a staffing crisis now than they have been over the last decade. So, I would say someone is playing politics and being rather misleading about the stated reason for suddenly dumping upper air obs. I would like to think all of these decisions coming from some ivory tower somewhere is driving the line meteorologists crazy. It is things like this that make it easier to believe why NWS has a staffing issue.