As I write this, Hurricane Helene has done its worst, making landfall near Perry, Florida. It’s currently a high-end tropical storm, and as of this moment there are 3.2 million Americans without power in its path, and there is a growing death toll.
The storm should not have taken anyone by surprise. It was well forecasted, and when it became clear it would be a massive, dangerous category 4 at landfall, tweaks and updates were made to the storm. Government agencies, including federal, state, and local, worked together to work their plan to help as many people get out of its way as possible, and are now just beginning to deal with its aftermath.
This is what happens during these storms. Despite some painfully stupid people online, these hurricanes are not exaggerated, overhyped, made up as part of climate change propaganda, or a Chinese hoax. Without emergency responders and all levels of government, including government weather forecasters, they would kill many more people and cause much more damage.
You may have heard of Project 2025, the ridiculous, absurd, and terrifying plan created by the right-wing Heritage Foundation that, despite Trump’s denials, will be a blueprint for a second Trump presidency. The ideas in it for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Weather Service (NWS), and the National Hurricane Center (NHC) are, well, ridiculous, absurd, and terrifying.
First, a thing about weather forecast accuracy…if you are one of those people who believe that weather forecasts are never right, allow me to point something out that may upset you. You would lose if you had to prove this using facts to an unbiased jury.
Anyway, Project 2025 would definitely make emergency planning around significant weather events much worse. For starters, they want to eliminate or privatize NOAA. The NWS falls under NOAA’s umbrella, as does the NHC.
So, they want to get rid of NOAA, and the NWS. But get this: They want to keep the NHC. I can see this for political reasons. You don’t want to tell Texas, Louisiana, Florida, the Carolinas, etc. that you want to rid them of the NHC. Likely even MAGAs would rebel against this.
There is a HUGE problem with this. And that’s where the data for the forecasts comes from.
All weather forecasters, from your local TV weather person to the NWS, use data gathered by NOAA satellites and computer models to help make their forecasts. Yeah, I know, Dear Ol’ Pappy use to look at moss on the sycamore tree and how big the frog asses were that year to forecast weather, but in reality, you actually do need data that isn’t folksy witchcraft to make forecasts.
So, no big deal, says the big brains behind Project 2025. We’ll either just have private entities gather and run the data, or we’ll leave it up to the states and territories. And wow, is that ever a stupid idea.
No shade on Louisiana, or Mississippi, or Missouri, or Arizona, or any of the other states where weather happens, which, checking my notes, is all 50 of them. Floods, blizzards, tornadoes, strong winds, etc. are things that happen in all 50 of our states. To tell the governor of Alabama, guess what, you’re going to have to launch your own satellites for weather data…I mean, this makes zero sense. Also, communications between the states is key because, well weather systems happen to move among the states. Hurricane Helene, for example, hit Florida but is currently in Georgia.
That’s not how the world works, Project 2025 masterminds. It’s much more economically practical to do it on a national level. We also communicate with the Mexican weather service and the Canadian weather service because we have to.
Not to mention that there is an entire system of observation stations, radar, etc. to help the average person understand what might be coming towards them. While there are partnerships with citizen scientists such as the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network for gathering precipitation and an entire network of personal weather stations offered by the private weather company Weather Underground, none of that is sufficient for large-scale forecasting.
Given the effects of climate change are only going to get worse, which we know because we can see and track the trends (NOAA does this and that’s the main reason why the Project 2025 weasels want to get rid of it), we absolutely need NOAA, the NWS, and the NHC. It’s not like we’re going to see less dangerous weather.
I’ll close and drive home the point that if your response to all this is “Meh, I get all my weather information from an app on my phone”…sit down, you might want to hear this. That information also comes from NOAA.
The last word goes to Bob Dylan.