(intentionally degraded image quality) With all of the controversy regarding the lack of National Weather Service launches, I wanted to let readers know that I have a photo of the building used as part of their weather balloon launches in my collection at Adobe Stock Photography .  Example photos from my collection of hundreds... And, with the wheat harvest coming up...

Posted late this afternoon on X. This is an addition to the essay below.  The National Weather Service is falling apart.    That is the only reasonable conclusion to be drawn by informed observation of its cumulative output during the past, highly active, 30 days of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes.    Before proceeding, I want to stipulate that the Trump Administration’s handling of the cost cutting and downsizing of NOAA earlier this year was unhelpful. Yes, there was – and still is – fat in the NWS and NOAA. Cutting the deficit should be a high priority but those cuts need to be well thought out and well executed.    I also want to state there are exhausted people in the NWS who are suffering from vast amounts of overwork due to manpower shortages that existed before President Trump took office -- that were made worse by President Trump’s layoffs and then rehiring, in some cases,  people with little to no experience. The quality of work of bu...

The answer is NO! The story is a bit of a mess and won't try to explain all of it. Here are the bottom lines: Yes, the tornado forecasts,  including the watch, on the 13th (Monday's tornadoes in Ottawa and in Miami County) were objectively poor. But few meteorologists who are familiar with tornado forecasting believe the weather balloon issue was the determining factor .  As to people, the 5-person team that issues tornado watches has been staffed with five well-qualified meteorologists the entire time. No cuts.  With regard to the tornado warning for Belton on the 17th, it was out six minutes before the tornado even formed. While a little more lead-time would have been nice, 6 minutes is adequate to dash to the basement.  The above said, the senior leadership of the NWS and NOAA need to resolve the weather balloon issue as soon as possible and the resolution should be based on meteorological science rather than convenience. 

National Weather Service office in Wichita From a National Weather Service (NWS) source this morning: "The offices in Wichita and Dodge City went down 'hard' since about 11:30pm last night. This is the third time in the past year. [ Note: There were severe thunderstorms near Dodge City last night.]  The NWS office in Goodland backed up Dodge City and Topeka backed up Wichita.  I've told you that failed communications systems with no backup  in each office has become an all-too-frequent problem. While each office has primary, secondary and tertiary backups, it has the potential to put a severe strain on the office providing backup, especially if they are short-staffed.  This has become a more frequent occurrence since the NWS stopped supporting the VSat satellite system each office had until last year. FYI: that was before the Trump Administration came into office." From a college meteorology professor yesterday evening who is upset with me because I believe maj...

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.  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 d...

In the middle is a parachute and, at lower left, the instrument package that measures temperature, humidity and GPS location. It's location is measured to  derive wind speed and direction.  We have discussed that the NWS is so under-resourced that it cannot perform its core mission. Another domino fell today.  You might say, "Who cares, Alaska is a long way away." The problem is that the weather moves throughout the world.  Below is a current weather satellite image showing a storm moving into southeast Alaska and western Canada.  That storm is forecast to be over the middle of the nation in five days. Already, the NWS's Storm  Prediction Center is flagging the potential for significant tornadoes in the gold area for Tuesday and Tuesday night. I believe this is the 4th weather balloon station in the United States we have lost due to resource issues.  If we want to have any kind of accuracy in forecasts beyond about 2 days, we must have quality worldwi...