#weather forecasting

Every private app, website, weather model, you name it, is built entirely on data gathered by instruments deployed and maintained by the federal government and its international partners. You can't shutter NOAA weather operations and say, "Oh, it's cool, I'll just use my app to get a forecast." They all use the same data.

Joe Waldner remembers the night last August when a radio in his home near Saskatoon began blaring an alert message. "Of course I come to my desktop, I pull open my radar. I'm looking at this system going, 'Oh yeah, this is going to be devastating,'" Waldner said. It was warning him of an intense storm system that went on to produce large hail, strong winds and even a tornado over central Saskatchewan. But Waldner is now without a way to get alerts like the way he did that August night. 

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Oliver Milman at Mother Jones:

Ted Cruz has had quite a week. On Tuesday, the Texas senator ensured the Republican spending bill slashed funding for weather forecasting, only to then go on vacation to Greece while his state was hit by deadly flooding, a disaster critics say was worsened by cuts to forecasting. Cruz, who infamously fled Texas for Cancun when a crippling winter storm ravaged his state in 2021, was seen visiting the Parthenon in Athens with his wife, Heidi, on Saturday, a day after a flash flood along the Guadalupe River in central Texas killed more than 100 people, including dozens of children and counselors at a camp. The Greece trip, first reported by the Daily Beast, ended in time for Cruz to appear at the site of the disaster on Monday morning to decry the tragedy and promise a response from lawmakers. “There’s no doubt afterwards we are going to have a serious retrospective as you do after any disaster and say, ‘Okay, what could be done differently to prevent this disaster?’” Cruz told Fox News. “The fact you have girls asleep in their cabins when flood waters are rising, something went wrong there. We’ve got to fix that and have a better system of warnings to get kids out of harm’s way.”

The National Weather Service (NWS) has faced scrutiny in the wake of the disaster after underestimating the amount of rainfall that was dumped upon central Texas, triggering floods that caused the deaths and around $20 billion in estimated economic damages. Late-night alerts about the dangerous floods were issued by the service but the timeliness of the response, and coordination with local emergency services, will be reviewed by officials. But before his Grecian holiday, Cruz ensured a reduction in funding to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) efforts to improve future weather forecasting of events that cause the sort of extreme floods that are being worsened by the human-caused climate crisis. Cruz inserted language into the Republicans’ “big beautiful” reconciliation bill, prior to its signing by Donald Trump on Friday, that eliminates a $150 million fund to “accelerate advances and improvements in research, observation systems, modeling, forecasting, assessments, and dissemination of information to the public” around weather forecasting.

A further $50 million in NOAA grants to study climate-related impacts on oceans, weather systems, and coastal ecosystems was also removed. Cruz was contacted by the Guardian with questions about these cuts and his trip to Greece. Environmental groups said the slashed funding is just the latest blow to federal agencies tasked with predicting and responding to disasters such as the Texas flood. More than 600 employees have exited the NWS amid a Trump administration push to shrink the government workforce, leaving many offices short-staffed of meteorologists and other support workers.

Around a fifth of all full-time workers at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), meanwhile, are also set to depart. “Ted Cruz has spent years doing Big Oil’s bidding, gutting climate research, defunding NOAA, and weakening the very systems meant to warn and protect the public,’ said Cassidy DiPaola, communications director of Fossil Free Media.

[...] Cruz, who has previously cast doubt over the scientific reality of the climate crisis, said that complaints about cuts to the National Weather Service are “partisan finger pointing,” although he conceded that people should’ve been evacuated earlier. “Some are eager to point at the National Weather Service and saying that cuts there led to to a lack of warning,” the Republican senator told reporters on Monday. “I think that’s contradicting by the facts and if you look in the facts in particular number one and these warnings went out hours before the flood became a true emergency.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) continues to embarrass himself in the worst ways: He not only encouraged the stripping of weather forecasting funds from the OBBBA, but also escaped to Greece when Central Texas got hit with a major flood that wiped out Camp Mystic due to the Guadalupe River’s rapid rise.

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Ted Cruz has had quite a week. On Tuesday, the Texas senator ensured the Republican spending bill slashed funding for weather forecasting, only to then go on vacation to Greece while his state was hit by deadly flooding, a disaster critics say was worsened by cuts to forecasting.

Cruz, who infamously fled Texas for Cancún when a crippling winter storm ravaged his state in 2021, was seen visiting the Parthenon in Athens with his wife, Heidi, on Saturday, a day after a flash flood along the Guadalupe River in central Texas killed more than 100 people, including dozens of children and counselors at a camp.

The Greece trip, first reported by the Daily Beast, ended in time for Cruz to appear at the site of the disaster on Monday morning to decry the tragedy and promise a response from lawmakers.

“There’s no doubt afterwards we are going to have a serious retrospective as you do after any disaster and say, ‘OK what could be done differently to prevent this disaster?’” Cruz told Fox News. “The fact you have girls asleep in their cabins when flood waters are rising, something went wrong there. We’ve got to fix that and have a better system of warnings to get kids out of harm’s way.”

The National Weather Service has faced scrutiny in the wake of the disaster after underestimating the amount of rainfall that was dumped upon central Texas, triggering floods that caused the deaths and about $20bn in estimated economic damages. Late-night alerts about the dangerous floods were issued by the service but the timeliness of the response, and coordination with local emergency services, will be reviewed by officials.

But before his Grecian holiday, Cruz ensured a reduction in funding to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (Noaa) efforts to improve future weather forecasting of events that cause the sort of extreme floods that are being worsened by the human-caused climate crisis.

Cruz inserted language into the Republicans’ “big beautiful” reconciliation bill, before its signing by Donald Trump on Friday, that eliminates a $150m fund to “accelerate advances and improvements in research, observation systems, modeling, forecasting, assessments, and dissemination of information to the public” around weather forecasting.

A further $50m in Noaa grants to study climate-related impacts on oceans, weather systems and coastal ecosystems was also removed. Cruz was contacted by the Guardian with questions about these cuts and his trip to Greece.

Environmental groups said the slashed funding was just the latest blow to federal agencies tasked with predicting and responding to disasters such as the Texas flood. More than 600 employees have exited the National Weather Service amid a Trump administration push to shrink the government workforce, leaving many offices short-staffed of meteorologists and other support workers.

About a fifth of all full-time workers at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), meanwhile, are also set to depart.

“Ted Cruz has spent years doing big oil’s bidding, gutting climate research, defunding Noaa, and weakening the very systems meant to warn and protect the public,’ said Cassidy DiPaola, communications director of Fossil Free Media.

“That’s made disasters like this weekend’s flood in Texas even more deadly. Now he’s doubling down, pushing through even more cuts in the so-called big beautiful bill. Texans are dead and grieving, and Cruz is protecting big oil instead of the people he’s supposed to represent. It’s disgraceful.”

Cruz, who has previously cast doubt over the scientific reality of the climate crisis, said that complaints about cuts to the National Weather Service are “partisan finger pointing”, although he conceded that people should have been evacuated earlier.

“Some are eager to point at the National Weather Service and saying that cuts there led to a lack of warning,” the Republican senator told reporters on Monday. “I think that’s contradicted by the facts and if you look at the facts in particular number one and these warnings went out hours before the flood became a true emergency.”

The Trump administration, too, has rejected claims that the service was short-staffed, pointing out that extra forecasters were assigned to the San Antonio and San Angelo field offices. The service’s employees union has said the offices were staffed adequately but were missing some key positions, such as a meteorologist role designed to coordinate with local emergency managers.

“People were sleeping in the middle of the night when the flood came,” said Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary. “That was an act of God; it’s not the administration’s fault the floods hit when it did.” Leavitt said any blame placed upon Trump for flood forecasting is a “depraved lie”.

Resources for weather forecasting, as well as broader work to understand the unfolding climate crisis, could be set for further cuts, however. The Trump administration’s 2026 budget proposal seeks to dismantle all of Noaa’s weather and climate research labs, along with Noaa’s entire research division. This would halt research and development of new weather forecasting technologies and methods.

This planned budget, which would need to be passed by the Republican-held Congress to become law, comes as the threats from extreme weather events continue to mount due to rising global temperatures.

“We have added a lot of carbon to the atmosphere, and that extra carbon traps energy in the climate system,” said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University.

“Because of this extra energy, every weather event we see now carries some influence from climate change. The only question is how big that influence is.

“Measuring the exact size takes careful attribution studies, but basic physics already tells us the direction – climate change very likely made this event stronger.”

In a statement sent after initial publication of this story, a spokesperson for Cruz claimed that the cut funding “had nothing to do” with weather forecasting and added, without providing further evidence, that Noaa’s funding could be spent more efficiently.

Imagine if Hurricane Helene had struck Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina with little or no warning. The death toll would have been in the hundreds rather than in the dozens. That's the world which Donald Trump and Project 2025 want us to adopt.

Emphasis added...

Hurricane Helene has derailed the Republican presidential ticket’s campaign across the South, forcing Trump’s vice presidential pick, J.D. Vance, to cancel several stops in Georgia. But the 20-foot storm surge–inducing, tornado-spawning weather event hasn’t yet changed Trump’s stance on his plan to tear down the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, root and branch. The climate agency, whose responsibilities include providing free weather forecasts as well as tracking and predicting hurricanes, would be completely gutted under Project 2025, the 920-page Christian nationalist manifesto that purports to be Trump’s second-term agenda. (Trump has haltingly and not particularly convincingly attempted to disavow Project 2025; a recently unearthed video features one of the project’s authors bragging that there will be “one-to-one mirroring” of the policies laid out in the document and Trump’s proposals.) “The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories,” the proposal reads on page 664. That would effectively privatize weather forecasts, forcing U.S. citizens to pay for weather subscriptions that would include national weather alert systems for emergencies like flash flooding, extreme heat, earthquakes, and others.

Just what we need – privatized forecasts beholden to Republicans with Sharpies. Politicians rather than scientists would have the final say on the forecasting we see.

Climate denial is behind this Trump/Project 2025 campaign promise. Fossil fuel companies are backing extremist Republicans. They don't want a federal agency which presents independent evidence of climate change caused by carbon emissions.

Beware of extremist proposals for privatization. In 1989 Margret Thatcher's Conservative Party pushed through Parliament the privatization of the water and sewage systems in England and Wales. Rivers and seashores are now dangerous thanks to raw sewage being dumped by private companies. This documentary was made before the Conservatives lost power in July.

MAGA Republicans pushing Project 2025 want to do to our weather what Thatcher's right-wing ideologues have done to waterways in the UK. Like Britain's rivers and streams, our weather forecasting would be full of poop under Trump Republican control.