More Trump Moves On Top Of NOAA Firings Will Threaten Forecasting And Peoples' Lives Even More

Now, the Trump team might shut down leases on
critical NOAA/National Weather Service 
forecasting buildings, further degrading 
the quality of U.S. weather forecasting on top
of the harm the administration's firing of hundreds
of NOAA workers did last week. 

 The Trump administration looks like it wants to end the leases on two buildings that house critical NOAA and National Weather Service nerve centers. 

First reported in The Verge, it appears the NOAA Center for Weather And Climate Prediction is on the list for a lease cancelation. 

Reports Axios: 

"The building houses the National Weather Service's National Centers for Environmental Prediction, or NCEP, which includes the Environmental Modeling Center. It opened in 2012 and has about 268,000 square feet of space. 

The modeling center runs the computer models used in day-to-day weather forecasting and ensures the weather data correctly goes into these models and that they are operating correctly."

This center provides information to the National Weather Service, Air Force, Navy and Federal Aviation Administration, as The Verge reports. 

So it''s not just a matter of you ending up with a little rain on a day that forecasters said was going to be partly sunny. These operations are crucial for public safety in severe weather, national defense, and airline safety. 

Additionally NOAA has canceled a lead for a radar development lab in Oklahoma. 

So far, luckily, the lease cancelations are not a done deal, if you can believe Trump administration officials. 

Per Axios:

"A senior White House officials told Axios on Tuesday that for NOAA, the administration is "simply re-evaluating the lease terms, not closing any building, which any good steward of money would do.  The official stressed that no formal lease-cancellation letter has been sent to NOAA. The official acknowledged that DOGE is canceling leases at other government agencies, but said NOAA is an exception."

Predictably, and accurately. many experienced meteorologists decried the idea of ending the building leases - and likely the operations they run - as a dangerous move that will cost American lives. 

"This is horrible news for numerical weather prediction in this country. The data that comes from these key parts of our weather enterprise saves lives," Jim Cantore the famed meteorologist on The Weather Channel posted on X.

Meteorologist Brad Panovich, Chief Meteorologist at WCNC in Charlotte, North Carolina raised this excellent point on X:

"This will literally bankrupt the U.S. If you ever wondered why NOAA/NWS is in the department of commerce, I have some news for you. Every single $ of our economy is impacted by the weather. Agriculture, Energy, Travel, Logistics, Defense, logistics of every major company etc. I could go on but you get the idea."

Panovich said he thinks, or at least hopes, the lease cancelation idea will be reversed.  

Meanwhile, the Washington Post recently dove a little deeper into how all those firings at NOAA would affect weather forecasting. 

Here's only a few examples. 

For one thing, around the clock weather monitoring could suffer. After all, dangerous storms can happen anytime of day or night. What if radar went down in the wee hours of the morning just as a swarm of tornado-producing thunderstorms approached a particular region?

After tornadoes, the National Weather Service sends meteorologists out to survey damage. That's not just to be looky loos.  The damage assessments help them determine how strong the tornado was. Then they can analyze radar and other data from during the storm to help them better forecast the path and strength of future tornadoes that might form. 

As much as 25 percent of the staff at NOAA's Environmental Modeling Center was cut.  This is the office that builds, maintains and improves the computer models widely used in weather forecasting. 

If these models are not maintained and built, the data gets worse, and so does the forecast accuracy. That's important when a large storm like a hurricane or intense nor'easter seems likely to form.  Emergency managers want the best model so they can accurately pre-position resources to quickly step in to help.

By the way, cuts to NOAA and the National Weather Service will not only cost lives, but also likely cost money, not save it.

The average United States taxpayer spends $3 for all the services and products the National Weather Service provides.   A 2019 study indicated that every $1 invested in the National Weather Service produces $73 in value for Americans. 

Today, an exceptionally large and powerful storm is sweeping the middle of the nation. It's spinning off tornadoes, blizzards, wildfires, floods, snowstorms and an incredible huge area of dangerous high winds stretching from New Mexico to New York. 

I hope that's investigated. 

This storm would have been incredibly challenging for National Weather Service meteorologists before the job cuts and the uncertainty and the morale issues this whole mess has brought on. 

Some tornadoes touched down in Texas.  A few of them had no warnings from the National Weather Service. It's still unclear if that was because the weather system was so complicated it was hard to tease out the developing tornadoes (possible), or whether this was related to last week's NOAA job cuts. 

As the spring severe storm season comes into focus, I fear we will have more "surprise" tornadoes because the Trump administration got rid of too many of the eyes that should be looking into these storms.