Tornado outbreaks catch forecasters by surprise after National Weather Service cuts : NPR
Staff reductions forced the National Weather Service to halt early morning weather balloon launches. Then two tornado outbreaks this spring surprised forecasters.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The National Weather Service lost hundreds of workers during President Trump’s second term. Does this make his predictions worse? Frank Morris of member station KCUR reports a tornado outbreak that has surprised forecasters.
FRANK MORRIS, BYLINE: Early on April 13, the National Weather Service predicted almost no tornado risk in east-central Kansas. But that evening, several tornadoes ravaged the region.
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MORRIS: The next morning in Ottawa, Kansas, volunteers shoveled broken glass and debris while Colton George (ph), who rode out the storm in a hotel basement, grappled with the tornado that tore through his hotel room, scattered his belongings and upended his life.
COLTON GEORGE: Well, I was laughing about it, honestly. I had a few beers. Then you come out, and it’s surreal. Like, you’re like, damn. You are homeless now.
MORRIS: He wasn’t hurt, though, because the National Weather Service issued a warning in time for George to get to safety. In fact, no one was seriously injured. That’s the good news. But weather service forecasters usually know hours in advance where tornadoes are likely. And this time, they didn’t.
JOHN MORALES: I’ll tell you, the forecasts in general – they’ve gotten worse.
MORRIS: John Morales, a television meteorologist with four decades of experience, says that a few years ago the National Weather Service would have released weather balloons across the country at exactly 7 a.m. Eastern Time. But that didn’t happen the morning of the storm.
MORALES: On that day, during the morning cycle of weather balloon releases, large areas of the Midwest, Southwest and Intermountain West had no weather balloon releases.
MORRIS: The balloons eventually took off, but by then storms were already brewing over Kansas. Weather balloons are actually just huge party balloons suspended from $100 gadgets the size of cell phones that measure temperature, air pressure and humidity as they rise through the atmosphere. Morales says some weather service offices no longer have staff available for pre-dawn launches.
MORALES: So you see they’re released during business hours, as opposed to times when we really need them.
MORRIS: The National Weather Service says almost all of its approximately 92 weather balloon launch sites are operating normally, with only a few missed launches. She says her forecasts keep getting better thanks to more powerful computers and increasingly sophisticated forecasting models. The quality of these models depends on the information that is introduced into them. Satellites and hundreds of ground weather stations generate tons of data, but the weather balloon is crucial. Take it out and, according to retired National Weather Service meteorologist Alan Gerard, you’re conducting a real-time experiment.
ALAN GERARD: Okay. Well, what happens if you take a significant number of balloons that we normally release in the morning and delay them until noon? What impact will this have on our forecasts?
MORRIS: It’s hard to say how weather balloon data that was never collected could have changed the forecast. But anecdotally, the results haven’t been great. A few weeks before the surprise tornadoes in Kansas, a similar situation occurred in Michigan. Weather service forecasters only put the state at marginal risk of tornadoes before deadly tornadoes strike the state.
SHARICE DAVIDS: I mean, these are literally life and death decisions that are made based on the warning systems.
MORRIS: Kansas Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids says the Trump administration obstructed the National Weather Service last year. The company cut nearly 600 employees due to DOGE job cuts and retirements. Then the company turned around and hired 200 new employees. But it will take months for these newcomers to train, and Davids says the forecast is suffering.
DAVIDS: Meteorologists say data collection is starting to lag – that we’re not continuing to keep people safe in the safest way possible.
MORRIS: It’s not for lack of trying. Gérard says his former colleagues at the Meteorological Service are doing their best.
GÉRARD: The majority of meteorological service employees are very dedicated and focused on their mission. They will therefore try to minimize the impacts on their mission as much as possible.
MORRIS: Government forecasters face increasingly dark clouds on the horizon. Gerard says the White House’s proposed budget would essentially eliminate federal weather research and cap the weather service’s budget at roughly this year’s level. Additionally, he says a major reorganization of the agency is expected to be announced this summer, at the start of hurricane season.
For NPR News, I’m Frank Morris in Kansas City.
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