DOGE Cuts Turned Devastating, Deadly Alaska Storm Into A Surprise, Leaving Some Unprepared

Destruction in western Alaska due to the severe
storm that hit over the weekend. Forecasting for
the storm appears to be substandard because
of cutbacks in funding and staffing for the 
National Weather Service

The horrible storm that caused at least one death and intense destruction in parts of western Alaska was forecasted inaccurately, due to DOGE cuts orchestrated by Elon Musk and the Trump administration, according to a CNN report. 

The bulk of the storm struck an area south of where computer models suggested it would. The models were apparently off because of a lack of good data. 

So-called Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE cutbacks meant some weather balloon launches were scrubbed for lack of funding. 

Per CNN:

"Weather balloon, which are typically launched twice a day, provide crucial information on wind speed and direction, air temperature, humidity, and other measurements. Balloon data is fed directly into sophisticated models used to predict the weather. 

However, there were few, if any, balloons to take measurements of what the weather was doing as the remains of Typhoon Halong approached Alaska late last week." 

Likely because of the lack of the balloon data, computer models had the storm striking the area around the Bering Strait, the point where Alaska and Russia are the closest to each other. 

Instead, the storm hit struck coastal southwest Alaska, sending deadly storm surges into communities like Kwigillingok and Kipnuk and other remote towns.  Houses floated away, some with people inside. Rescuers were able to retrieve at least two dozen people. However, one person is confirmed dead and two are missing. 

National Weather Service forecasts in Alaska did issue many warnings for the area that was hit hardest boy the storm, but they did so without the help of accurate model projects made days in advance.

That might have meant that warnings that should have gone out sooner didn't. 

The Alaska Beacon compared this storm with another ex-typhoon named Merbok in 2022.

"Unlike Merkok, which was very well forecast by the global models, this one's final track and intensity weren't clear until the storm was within 36 hours of crossing into Alaska's waters. That's too late for evacuations in many places."

The area hit by the storm is remote, so it's not easy to deal with an extreme storm. It's not like the Lower 48, where people can evacuate to a nearby school, municipal building or hotel when severe weather looms.  In Alaska, you need more time to prepare. 

The Alaska Beacon also tells us:  "There have not been any upper air weather balloon observations at Saint Paul Island in the Bering Sea since late August or at Kotzebue since February. Bethel and Cold Bay are limited to one per day instead of two. At Nome, there were no weather balloons for two full days as the storm."

Meteorologists are still trying to assess to what extent the lack of balloon launches had on forecast accuracy. 

 CNN continues:

"'Not having balloons didn't help,' the forecast, said a NOAA official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, although forecasts for Alaska also really on data from Asia as storms move from that region into North America." 

All the major computer models had errors in the projected path of the storm, though it's hard to tease out  how much of that error was due to the lack of balloon launches and their data, and how much might have been from other factors.  

The aftermath of the storm is more difficult in remote areas like the west coast of Africa. There's no Home Depot right around the corner to buy replacement roofing, windows and flooring. For those whose houses were destroyed, there's nowhere to go. 

Hundreds of people have been displaced. The Alaska Beacon says residents are face with an impossible decision: They could go to come place like Anchorage for the winter and return next summer to rebuild. But cities are expensive. 

However, there's no housing in the remote coastline of Alaska to move into. All disasters are incredibly difficult for the victims. In Alaska, it's even more so. 

 

National Weather Service Hiring Back Some Meteorologists

Hey, Elon, we told you it was a bad idea

The National Weather Service is now able to
reverse many of the DOGE cuts and will
rehire hundreds of meteorologists 
foolishly let go earlier this year.

Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency slashed their way through federal workers last winter and early spring, leaving critical tasks under-staffed, and actually probably costing more money than we actually saved. 

Now that Musk and Donald Trump saw their famous bromance break up, a few pockets of the federal government are reconsidering these cuts. 

Thankfully, the National Weather Service is one of those agencies. 

Per CNN:

"The National Weather Service has received permission to hire 450 meteorologists, hydrologists, and radar technicians just months after being hit hard by Department of Government Efficiency-related cuts and early retirement incentives. 

The new hiring number includes 126 new positions that were previously approved and will apply to 'front line mission critical'  personnel, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration official told CNN."

This whole thing is so stupid, anyway. Pretty much everyone warned we were losing the people needed to keep Americans safe from storms and other weather hazards. Now, taxpayer dollars are going to train new employees, when just months ago we had experienced meteorologist who were already there and needed no onboarding. 

CNN again: 

"How much time/money is it going to cost to train a bunch of new people when we had already-trained people in place,' asked another NOAA official, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. It is possible that some of the new hires will have been previously trained employees who were let go in the DOGE cuts."

Outcry does work sometimes even in the era of Trump. Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have argued for a public safety exemption for NWS employees, much like law enforcement is exempted from cuts due to their central role in keeping us safe. 

The new hires will ease but not erase critical staffing shortages in National Weather Service offices across the nation.  It's unclear if some of the weather balloon launches that had been suspended due to the shortages will resume.  

Those weather balloon launches are necessary to gauge complex atmospheric factors that greatly influence the severity of tornadoes, flash floods and other dangerous weather. 

 This rehiring, and the renewal of some services the National Weather Service relies upon, sets back, at least for now, the dream of some in the MAGA crowd to privatize weather forecasting in the U.S.

The National Weather Service offers the bulk of its data free to the public, including private weather forecasting companies. 

Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation playbook that the Trump administration seems to be following, had said that the NWS "should fully commercialize its forecasting operations."

In other words, a private entity should take over forecasting for profit. Which always means higher costs and poorer results for us.  And would it lead to a world in which we receive tornado, flash flood and hurricane warnings only if we can afford to pay for them?  Does it mean low income people don't "deserve" life-saving warnings?

I'm not sure, but that seems to be the idea.

For now, we're safe from that dystopian idea. 

Meanwhile, it will take months to rehire the National Weather Service meteorologists. Hurricane season is now in full swing. Dangerous flash floods, wildfires, heat waves and other hazards continue to affect large parts of the nation. 

We've so far been lucky that the National Weather Service staff shortages haven't endangered public safety very much.  Let's hope that continues until everybody's is rehired, and beyond. 

NOAA Cutbacks From DOGE And Trump Are Continuing To Degrade Weather Forecast Accuracy. More Balloon Launches Scrubbed

DOGE staff cuts at NOAA means more weather balloon
launches have been cut. Those weather balloons are
critical for forecasting all sorts of weather. Including
severe storms and tornadoes. As we head into
tornado season, forecast accuracy will decline,
making these storms even more dangerous. 

 Your weather forecasts might get even less accurate than I thought with all the cutbacks at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA. 

Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE has decimated staffing at NOAA, leading to tough decisions on how to manage weather forecasts, and more importantly, warning the public when dangerous weather looms. 

Up to 1,000 NOAA employees have been let go. 

The latest issues is that more National Weather Service offices are canceling weather balloon launches due to staff shortages.  

That will lead to less reliable weather forecasts, and quite likely unpleasant and deadly storm surprises starting in the near future. 

THE LATEST CUTS

Per the Associated Press:

"The normally twice-daily launches of weather balloons in about 100 locations provide information that forecasters and computer models use to figure out what the weather will be and how dangerous it can get, so cutting back is a mistake, said eight different scientists, meteorologists and former top officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration -  the weather service's parent agency."

Believe me, it's not just eight scientists. That's just the ones the AP quoted for their article. There's universal derision and frustration with the NOAA cutbacks.  It will cost lives.

Not that Trump and Elon Musk care. 

We previously reported cutbacks on weather balloon launches from Kotzebue, Alaska; Albany, New York and Gray, Maine. 

Now, we learn balloon launches will be eliminated at Omaha, Nebraska and Rapid City, South Dakota. Twice daily launches will be reduced to once daily at Aberdeen, South Dakota, Grand Junction, Colorado, Green Bay, Wisconsin, Gaylord, Michigan, North Platte, Nebraska and Riverton, Wyoming. 

On top of all the launch cancelations due to staffing shortages,  some balloon launches are not happening because of a helium shortage. Also, there's sometimes technical issues that prevent balloon launches.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Taken together, that leaves big holes and blank spots in the data that goes into comprehensive weather forecasts. 

Many of the newly ended ballon launches are in the northern United States, where the jet stream is most commonly positioned in the spring and early summer.  The jet stream controls weather systems, so you really want to examine that part of the atmosphere for signs of storms. 

That lack of weather balloons will hinder that effort. 

We are now at the beginning of the peak severe storm and tornado season in the United States. Those balloon launches offer critical insights into what is happening on the atmosphere, helping meteorologists predict when severe weather - including tornadoes - might hit and how bad they'll get. 

Since there will now be a big data hole from those canceled balloon launches in the middle of the nation, the eastern United States in particular might have poorer weather forecasts. That's because the weather generally flows west to east. 

"For those of us east of the Rocky Mountains, this is probably the worst time of year," said (University of Oklahoma environmental professor Renee)  McPherson,'  'It's the time of year that we have some of our largest tornado outbreaks, especially as we move into April and May."

"This frankly is just dangerous," McPherson told the AP.

We had an incredibly severe storm outbreak in mid-March that claimed 42 lives. However, lives were saved because the storm was anticipated well in advance. That gave people, including emergency managers, time to prepare. When tornadoes started touching down, warnings went out so that people could seek shelter. That surely saved lives. 

That's the state of affairs with most severe weather outbreaks. 

With the balloon launch cancelations, we'll still get a heads up from the National Weather Service about approaching dangerous weather. But accuracy levels on the location of the bad weather and its intensity could well wane.

Additionally, when severe storms and tornadoes actually develop, short staffed National Weather Service offices might miss the signs of an impending tornado, and thus not issue any warnings until its too late.

If a tornado is approaching,  you want everybody to know about it. The best way to get that word out is through a National Weather Service tornado warning. 

These balloon launch problems will also probably interfere with hurricane forecasts, and predictions for wildfire weather conditions. 

Less important but still worth noting is that your day to day forecasts for routine weather will likely degrade, too.  The joke is that meteorologists are always wrong, but that's not at all backed up by the facts. 

The forecast for today actually has about a 97 percent chance of being accurate. A forecast for three days from now is about 90 percent. A forecast for a week from now has a 70 percent accuracy rate.

These excellent figures will worsen as the Trump administration hacks away at NOAA staffing and resources.  

Trump, Musk and the other oligarchs now seizing control of the United States are protecting from severe weather by their wealth and staff. As opposed us rubes who live in the real world and deal with real things. 

But the oligarchs don't care about us. The DOGE cuts aren't really about saving taxpayer money. It's all about lining pockets of said oligarchs to make them more rich and powerful.  No proof here, but I suspect the government "savings" will never go into most of our hands. 

After all, the DOGE cuts are designed to finance tax cuts for the rich, as the Republican led Congress is set to do.

Follow the money indeed! 

 

Another DOGE/Trump Casualty: Crucial Carbon Dioxide Monitoring At Hawaii Site

This is the record dating back 67 years of atmospheric
carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere, as
measured on Mauna Loa, Hawaii.  Trump and his
Musk/DOGE crowd apparently want to end these decades-
long observations. The excuse is saving money, but
likely just as much climate denial.

 Another likely casualty of Trump and the DOGE morons: A historic, closely watched, important constant measurement of global atmosphere carbon dioxide could be about to go by the wayside. 

Elon Musk and his DOGE minions want to shut down the more than six decade long science experiment  conducted on a Hawaii volcano.  

Per USA Today:

"Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency is considering terminating the lease of a tiny office that supports a huge climate science experiment - one that's been ongoing for 67 years." 

Only eight people work at the office, Suite 102 at the Kilauea Financial Plaza in Hilo.  Once a week or so, one of the employees takes a quick helicopter ride up to a spot 11,135 feet above sea level on a high slope of the Mauna Loa volcano.

Doesn't sound like a big deal, but this is.  The scientists  do several observations of the atmosphere, and one of these regular observations is one of the most precise and long running, and most watched climate experiments in the world. 

The scientists have been tracking carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for 60 years. This long-running experiment provided the first significant, concrete evidence that the earth' CO2 levels were steadily rising, as USA Today reported.

The Mauna Loa site is perfect for these measurements, as NOAA tells us: "The observatory protrudes through the strong marine temperature inversion layer present in the region, which separate the more polluted lower portions of the atmosphere from the much cleaner free troposphere. 

"The undisturbed air, remote location, and minimal influence of vegetation and human activity at MLO are ideal for monitoring constituents in the atmosphere that can cause climate change."

The DOGE people say closing the Hilo facility would save $164,000 or so. That's not much given the size of the overall federal budget.  My conspiratorial mind wants to think it's because climate change i central to the Mauna Loa site, and we all know how Trump hates it when somebody dares to say climate change is an actual thing. 

I'm not the only one thinking this way. In it's journalistic way, the Washington Post beat around the bush a little but you'll get the point in this excerpt from their article:

"Data collected from the observatory have shown global carbon dioxide levels - the most significant driver behind record planetary warming - are rising faster than ever recorded. Trump has been dismissive of that data and the consensus around climate change and his allies who wrote the policy playbook Project 2025 proposed dismantling NOAA, calling it a source of climate alarmism." 

Climate scientist Michael Mann, posted his reaction to all this on Bluesky was, as usual, more blunt.   "See no climate change, hear no climate change, and speak no climate change."

As usual, the Trump/DOGE crowd don't seem to be coordinating things or understanding what is going on. 

If the Hilo office closes, the Mauna Loa observatory would still be there, but with the office gone and the staff fired, if Musk gets his way, there will be nobody to do the actual work up there. 

There's another testing site on Mauna Kea, another volcano nearby, but again, that site needs NOAA staff to maintain the equipment. 

Not only is the climate data from Mauna Loa valuable, and a resource we might be about to lose, but the move to shut this all down gets rid of history, too.

Back in 1958, scientist Charles David Keeling began the measurements in 1958.  His measurements made two important discoveries. He was the first person to record Earth's breathing  - a regular rhythm of peaks and valleys in carbon dioxide concentrations.  

This proved that seasonally, plants take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere when they're growing, and release it back when the growing season is over and the plants died.

Even more importantly, he was the first to prove that carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere were rising due to fossil fuel emissions. This discovery really laid the foundation to the detailed climate change science we have today. 

Before the industrial revolution, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was at around 280 parts per million. When Keeling first started measuring in 1958, it was up to 313 parts per million. Now, we're up to 427 parts per million and still going up. 

That amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere sounds like a trifle to the untrained eye. But the last time carbon dioxide levels were this high was about 3 million years ago. At that time, sea levels were as much as 30 feet higher than they are now, and camel-like animals roamed the forested high Arctic, which is nowadays covered in ice.  

That's part of the future we face at least someday due to our sky-high emissions of fossil fuels over the past 150 years or so. 

NOAA Trouble: DOGE Security Breaches, Threatened Major Budget Cuts, Firings, Public Safety Threatened

The DOGE and Trump ongoing attacks against 
NOAA and the National Weather Service aren't 
really about cost cutting as they'd have you believe.
It's all about denying reality while enriching
the billionaire and corporate class at
the expense of the rest of us. 

The oligarch tech bros and their master Elon Musk are now after NOAA and the National Weather Service. 

Which I guess is fine if you want a future where if a tornado bearing down as a complete surprise, because there was no decent National Weather Service to warn you about it.  

Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE is attacking NOAA just like is many other federal departments.  Since NOAA is primarily a science-oriented organization, we can't have that! To the MAGA crowd, Science = Bad.  

The fantasy is that if you deny science and reality, things will just do what you want.  

Until reality bites you in the butt.   

Those bitten butts clearly haven't happened yet, so Trump and Musk and the MAGA crowd continue to have their gleeful field day. 

CUTS AND JOB LOSS

The DOGE crowd is already telling NOAA employees to get ready to pack their bags. 

Per CBS News:

"Former NOAA officials told CBS News that current employees have been told to expect a 50 percent reduction in staff and budget cuts of 30 percent." 

Not that Congress or anybody else in Washington seems to care, but Musk and his snotty-nosed frat pack bros in his DOGE troupe aren't the ones that are supposed to be cutting staff and budgets.  (I swear when somebody asks the parents of these young bucks how/what they're doing, they change the subject).

Congress has the power of the purse. President Trump can of course propose big budget and staff cuts and ask Congress to approve them. Which they might, since so many in Congress are his fan boys and girls. 

So we're so far just standing by while Trump and Musk and their minions circumvent the Constitution in their oligarchical, billionaire ways.

Of course, if there is waste and mismanagement at NOAA, that needs to go. A fact-based review of expenditures is a great idea. But a dictatorial purge?  As the cost of public safety?

As CNN reports:

Further staff reductions at the National Weather Service "means we have a higher - a maybe much higher probability of missing life-saving weather warnings and giving people a heads up they need," said Mary Glackin, former president of the American Meteorological Society and former high ranking NOAA official. 

Hurricane forecasting is just one area of potential trouble. 

As CNN points out, a dozen people work in the National Hurricane Center's specialist forecasting unit.  That's the staffing level that's been in effect for years, even as the number of storms increase. Cutbacks would likely harm hurricane forecasting. 

SECURITY

The big Vermont flood of July, 2023 killed two Vermonters,
but superb warnings from the National Weather 
Service prevented more deaths from this
very dangerous weather event. 

Musk and his minions are just barging into sensitive payroll and computer systems like he owns them, creating security risks, and potentially unilaterally changing payroll, systems and sensitive employee data with no oversight. 

Former NOAA officials told CBS that these DOGE bros showed up at NOAA headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland and at the U.S. Commerce Department building in Washington DC . (The Commerce Department oversees NOAA like they owned the place. 

Again, per CBS:

"'They walked through security like it didn't apply to them' Andrew Rosenberg, a former deputy director  for NOAA, said of DOGE staff. 'They were there and they were going through IT systems.....They're not asking substantial questions about what NOAA does and the importance of its role. This isn't a review to figure out efficiency."

At least one Congress creature is making a bit of a public stink about this, so we'll take anything we can get. CBS News reports:

"Democratic Sen. Chris Van Holler of Maryland, who represents the state where NOAA is headquartered, said his office is investigating DOGE's work on NOAA, which includes such agencies as the National Weather Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service.

'Hearing reports that Musk's cronies are targeting NOAA - infiltrating key systems and locking out career employees,' Van Hollen posted on X Tuesday. "NOAA is vital for weather forecasting, scientific research & more. Their critical work saves lives. My team and I are looking into this & we will not stand for it.'"

It's not just Van Hollen that's hearing about this. Aides to various Congress creatures have heard the same thing.  

SCIENCE 

Getting rid of career employees at NOAA damages the work of science and of weather forecasting, but the Trump administration is going further with this anti-science tirade 

Per Wired:

"'A number of federal employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. federal agency that monitors and models the oceans and atmosphere for the purpose of predicting changes in climate and weather, have received orders to temporarily cease communication with foreign nationals, including those working directly with the U.S. government, WIRED has learned."

 Wired reports that NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service had received orders to pause "all international engagements" including "foreign national colleagues" including emails "with foreign national colleagues."

It's unclear how extensive this directive extends in NOAA.  The Marine Fisheries Service deals with offshore wind energy among many other things, and Trump hates, hates offshore wind energy for some reason 

So that might be part of it. 

But, Wired's reporting gets even more ominous.

"According to another source at NOAA, the incommunicado orders extend to the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service. In addition to gathering data from across the federal government, NESDIS relies on a wide range of international partners. NESDIS's weather and climate data is essential not only to air transportation safety but also to combat drought, monitor coral reef destruction and safeguard railway shipping carriers against dangerous weather."

If the directive to stop communicating with foreign nationals ends up extending across NOAA, that right there cripples our ability to forecast weather.  

What goes on in the atmosphere over other countries doesn't stay there. Weather systems are interconnected globally.  A big change in the jet stream over, say, Mongolia, could well have a big influence on what kind of weather eventually happens in Peoria. 

You want an America First policy? Then you have to keep tabs on what's going on elsewhere in the world. Which means cooperating with other international meteorological an climatological organizations. We need to keep close tabs on weather conditions worldwide to help determine if we in the United States face dangerous storms. 

They of course there's climate science. You know, global warming? It affects the United States, too, though Trump seems not to think so. It's getting to the point that I'm actually starting to hope a climate-powered hurricane storm surge damages Mar-A-Lago just to teach him a lesson. After all, just because Trump decrees climate change is a hoax, doesn't make it so. Jokes on him, right?

You need global cooperation to study and combat climate change, including the effects it has on the United States. America First, indeed! 

THE GOAL

Like all the lofty talk from DOGE and Trump that they're trying to end government waste, this is largely about making billionaire and corporations richer. 

Project 2025 calls for privatizing NOAA and the National Weather Service. Here's one reason why, via The Guardian:

"....it had been a longtime goal of corporations that rely on NOAA data to prevent the agency from making the data public, instead of giving it directly to private corporations that create products based on it, such as weather forecasting services."

You get more details on this from NPR, which noted in one interview that websites made detailed National Weather Service data for anybody to access.  That doesn't sit well with private companies, noted Wailin Wong of the Planet Money podcast The Indicator. "If customers can get sophisticated data from the government for free, maybe they wouldn't pay for that kind of information anymore," he said, 

If you go full bore and privatize the National Weather Service, which seems to be an eventual goal here, people will need to pay for their weather forecasts. Sure, they already do in taxes. 

Each individual taxpayer in the United States spends $3 a year for all that the National Weather Service does. Everything from telling you to bring the umbrella to work with you tomorrow to telling you to hide in the basement NOW because that tornado is headed toward you. 

You can be sure a privatized system would cost all of us more, at least those of us who can afford it.  People who can't would just be out of luck.  I guess in a billionaire's mind, the poors don't deserve the warnings that would save their lives in hurricanes and floods and such.

Americans were sold on the idea of limiting government waste. I'm sold on the idea of eliminating government waste

I think many of the people who voted for Trump had gotten themselves convinced he's the guy who would combat this huge, gaping growing inequality between the billionaire class and everyone else. 

I just hope people soon realize that's not what's going on here. It's not about giving us taxpayers a break.  It's a all a grift. NOAA is the one many pieces of that grift in action. 

And we'll all be the losers because of it. Except of course for Elon Musk and his merry band of oligarchs.