Critical Hurricane Forecast Tool To Stay Active After All

Visible satellite view of Hurricane Milton, which
grew explosively in the Gulf of Mexico last year.
At the last minute, the U.S. Defense Department
reversed a decision that would have crippled
nighttime monitoring of developing hurricanes. 

In a rare, wise move from the U.S. Defense Department. they've reversed a recent decision to end satellite monitoring that is crucial to forecasting hurricanes and other dangerous weather. 

That move in June to end the microwave satellite monitoring technology created outcry among meteorologists because they said ending the monitoring would hamstring hurricane forecasting, just as the tropical storm season was getting under way.

Apparently, the pressure from hurricane forecasters and others worked. 

Per the Washington Post:

"....officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Tuesday that they now expect 'no interruption' in the data their meteorologists received through what is known as the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, which includes microwave-based observations that reveal storm activity even through the cover of darkness."

The Defense Department was vague about the reasons behind the original decision to shut down the satellite monitoring, hinting at security concerns or a need to replace equipment. 

WaPo continues: 

 "'But after feedback from government partners, officials found a way to meeting modernization goals while keeping the data flowing until the sensor fails or the program formally ends in September, 2026,' a Navy spokesperson said in an email."

The reference to September, 2026 stems from the U.S. Space Force plans to replacing existing satellites with new ones. The first began operating in April but doesn't appear ready yet to do the microwave based observations, at least for storm forecasting. Another satellite should begin running in 2027.

Meteorologists were relieved at the late breaking news. 

 "Some good news for a change! We will keep a critical source of microwave satellite data going for at least another year, or until the satellites, which are already operating 15 year past their expected lifetime, fail," said Dr. Jeff Masters on Bluesky.

There's plenty of satellite data out there to monitor hurricanes during the day. A visual assessment of the clouds swirling around a growing hurricane can offer some of the clues as to whether the storm is strengthening and by how much and where the danger is heading.

The microwave data that almost went away is crucial to head off what hurricane forecasters call "sunrise surprises."

Under the cover of darkness, hurricanes sometimes explosively strengthen, catching people off guard who were expecting a relatively weak hurricane and instead facing a monster, Climate change seems to have increased the frequency of these exploding hurricanes. 

The microwave data allows meteorologists to catch these strengthening trends early, allowing them to quickly adjust forecasts and warn people in nearby coastal areas. 

"The last-minute move averts a crisis for forecasters who rely on the data to predict dangerous and potentially deadly episodes of rapid intensification and their computer models that use data from these microwave imagers to predict the movement and intensity of hurricanes," Michael Lowry, a former National Hurricane Center scientist, wrote on Substack. 

 We are just getting into the heart of hurricane season.  While no hurricane threats are looming now, it's inevitable that we'll need to carefully watch the Atlantic for these dangerous storms late this month and on into September and October.  

Hurricane Forecasts To Suffer Due To Trump Defense Department Change, Could Endanger Lives

Satellite view of Hurricane Beryl last July.
The Defense Department is taking away
crucial satellite data that would reduce
the accuracy of what until now has
been excellent hurricane forecasting, 

 The U.S. Department of Defense has inexplicably announced it would end providing some  satellite weather data, leaving meteorologists without crucial information about hurricanes that will loom over the Atlantic Ocean and potentially threaten land. 

This could lead to inaccurate forecasts, or less lead time to warn coastal residents threatened by hurricanes. 

Per NPR:

"For more than 40 years, the Defense Department has operated satellites that collect information about conditions in the atmosphere and ocean.

 A group within the Navy, called the Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center, processes the raw data from the satellites, and turns it over to scientists and weather forecasters who use it for a wide range of purposes, including real-tine hurricane forecasting and measuring sea ice in polar regions."

The Department of Defense out of the blue announced last week that they would stop providing that data as of June 30.  After an outcry, they graciously offered to continue to provide the data through the end of July. 

This data is critical for hurricane forecasting, so waiting to end the program at the end of July doesn't help much. That's because hurricane season peaks in August and September. The most frequent, and most ferocious hurricanes tend to occur in those two months. 

This whole mess has left people speculating why the data will stop being available. Again, per NPR:

"'It's not an issue of funding cuts,' says Mark Serreze, the director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, a federally funded research center in Colorado that has lied on the soon-to-be-terminated Defense Department data to track sea ice since 1979. 'There are cybersecurity concerns. That's what we're being told.'"

I'm suspicious, as I usually am with anything involving the Trump administration. 

Information from the Snow and Ice Data Center shows that climate change is reducing the amount of sea ice in the Arctic. The Trump administration is hostile to the facts of climate change.  Perhaps they're trying to block data that contradicts their decidedly non-scientific view. 

NIGHTTIME MONITORING 

The data we'll lose is through using Defense Department satellites to observe storms like hurricanes at night. Visible satellite data is useful during the day. Much less so at night. 

As the Washington Post explains:

"....by observing microwave radiation that emanates from Earth's surface - and the ways it interacts with water - scientists can detect where and how intensely water is distributed. It lets them see where clouds are what the structure of a storm - such as its eyewall and wind patterns - look like."

After losing the Defense Department microwave monitoring, we'll still have some microwave monitoring from a satellite mission jointly operated by the United States and Japan. But those atmospheric scans are infrequent, so we won't have enough real time night data on rapidly evolving hurricanes.

The result will be what is known as "sunrise surprises."  Back before microwave data was available, meteorologists would discover at dawn that a hurricane has abruptly changed strength and direction overnight. In short, these scientists would discover that a hurricane isn't in the spot where it's "supposed" to be, and perhaps it has grown from a nothing burger to a monster. 

That means the public won't have as much lead time to get ready if a hurricane suddenly decides to strengthen and take aim at a coastal city instead of harmlessly curving out to sea as forecasters might have presumed the evening before. 

HURRICANE SURPRISES

This is particularly dangerous if the unexpected shift happens when the hurricane pulls its overnight shenanigans near the coastline. 

Destruction from the Great Long Island/New England
hurricane of 1938, which took the region by surprise.
We don't want to go back to the days when
hurricanes surprised us. 

This whole Defense Department move will be a throwback to the old days when hurricanes took us by surprise. A classic example goes way back to 1938.  

Back in those days, weather forecasting was not nearly as sophisticated as it is today. In September, 1938, meteorologists were aware of a strong hurricane off the southeast U..S. coast. They believed it would head northeast, and remain far enough offshore to not cause harm.

Instead, the 1938 hurricane slammed into Long Island and New England, leaving a trail of devastation that killed at least 690 people and caused $400 million in 1938 dollar damage. (That would be more than $9 billion in 2025 dollars).  

Granted, we have other tools nowadays besides nighttime microwave monitoring that would  help prevent such a tragedy. But still, do we really want to risk surprise hurricanes like this?

These days, climate change is making hurricane monitoring more important than ever, as a warmer atmosphere is altering the behavior of these storms. 

 Per Washington Post:

"Many scientists have said the microwave data is more valuable than ever as more hurricanes are undergoing rapid intensification, in which they transform from tropical storms or low-end hurricanes into major Category 4 or 5 storms within a matter of hours - often just before making landfall."

I guess the Trump administration figures that looming dangerous weather is also none of our business. 

As I noted as recently as Monday, the Trump crew has cut back on NOAA and the National Weather Service so much that forecast offices are severely short staffed, and needed data to make accurate weather forecasts has become increasingly spotty as a result.  Hurricane hunter flights might well be reduced as well due to cutbacks, taking away even more crucial storm data. 

WHAT THE ADMINISTRATION SAYS

The Navy did not return media inquiries regarding this issue.  The Trump administration never explains what they're doing anyway.  Apparently, it's none of our business what our supposed government does. 

WaPo says that NOAA spokeswoman Kim Duster dismissed the microwave data as "a single dataset in a robust suite of hurricane forecasting and modeling tools" that include satellite data (which doesn't work as well at night) and ground based weather stations and buoys (which are very sparse out in the regions where hurricanes develop) and weather balloon data (which are launched less frequently now due to DOGE cutbacks at NOAA).

The hurricane season has just begun.  So far, we've had two, brief, weak tropical storms that were either harmless (Andrea out in the middle of the Atlantic a little over a week ago) and Barry, which caused minor flooding in northeastern Mexico on Sunday).

Much stronger tropical storms and hurricanes are inevitable as we head through the rest of the summer and into the autumn. 

During last year's busy hurricane season, I was stunned by how accurate the forecasts were for those powerful storms, and how well warned people in the hurricane paths were. Even so, these hurricanes  managed to kill scores of people and cause billions of dollars in damage.

Now imagine a scenario where the warnings give little lead time and are not as accurate as they've been in recent years. That's what we might well be faced with in the coming months.