Meteorologists say NWS cuts degraded forecasts during recent storms

The National Weather Service’s reduction in weather balloon launches left forecasters on shaky ground last week as the central U.S. got hammered with hail and tornadoes, outside meteorologists told NBC News.

Severe storms brought dozens of tornadoes to the central U.S. starting Thursday, snarling Easter weekend travel. Twisters were reported in Oklahoma, Texas and Nebraska, and the storm system brought several inches of snow to parts of Colorado and baseball-sized hail to Wisconsin.

The storms were one of the first tests of weather forecasts during severe weather since balloon releases were cut back in places like Grand Junction, Colorado; Omaha, Nebraska; and Green Bay, Wisconsin, among other sites. Balloon launches are time-intensive tasks, and many local offices were forced to cut back after the Trump administration trimmed the size of NWS by offering early retirements and laying off some probationary workers.

Last Thursday, six tornadoes tracked across eastern Nebraska from just before 7 p.m. until just after 9 p.m. Chris Vagasky, a meteorologist and weather balloon expert, said the National Weather Service issued the proper tornado alerts at the right time, but that additional data only available from balloons could have helped identify the tornado threat sooner.

“The forecasters in the weather service know what to look for on radar and other data to issue the right warnings at the right time, but having additional data that gives an indication of low-level wind shear or moisture helps give you confidence when issuing those warnings,” Vagasky said.

Vagasky, a research program manager for Wisconet, a network of weather stations across Wisconsin, said the local forecast office near Omaha deployed a special weather balloon at 3 p.m. local time, something staffers often do before thunderstorms.

At that time, the balloon’s data “looked like a hail threat,” Vagasky said. “There was a lot of atmospheric instability and some wind shear, but the wind shear wasn’t what you’d normally see in a tornado event.”

Before the staffing cuts, the weather service would have released another, regularly scheduled weather balloon at 7 p.m., just as tornadoes started to pop up in Nebraska. On Thursday, it didn’t.

“We didn’t get to see how the atmosphere had evolved between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. to understand how did the atmosphere evolve so that now we’re getting tornadoes instead of hail,” Vagasky said.

The National Weather Service said in a statement that it was dedicated to serving American communities effectively and had continued to do that even with fewer weather balloon releases.

“The National Weather Service is committed to delivering accurate, timely, and life-saving forecasts despite speculation,” said Kim Doster, communications director for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Through strategic transformation, staff reallocation, and updated service standards, NWS is ensuring resilience and continuity of mission-critical functions. Reports suggesting otherwise are false and disrespectful to the many weather scientists who work tirelessly to produce the best weather data in the world.”

The NWS began limiting its weather balloon releases in February. In March, the service said it would miss some launches in Albany, New York, and Gray, Maine. It canceled launches, at least temporarily, in Omaha, Nebraska, and Rapid City, South Dakota. It also limited flights at sites in Colorado, Michigan, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

On Thursday, the weather service said weather balloon releases could be canceled from any of its roughly 100 sites.

“Until further notice, the National Weather Service (NWS) may temporarily reduce or suspend scheduled radiosonde launches at selected NWS upper air sites due to staffing limitations or operational priorities,” said a note from Mike Hopkins, the director of surface and upper air observations for NWS. “Office(s) will continue to conduct special observations as resources allow and in response to emerging weather events.”

Matt Lanza, a meteorologist in Houston who writes for The Eyewall blog, said the decision meant that meteorologists wouldn’t know when data would be available.

“This is almost certainly going to degrade weather model forecasts in addition to now having no guarantees that data meteorologists use will be there on any given day,” Lanza said in a message. “This is incredibly important. It’s impossible to know how important, because every day will be a new roll of the dice.”

Storms generally track from west to east in the United States, so weather balloons often provide data about what can be expected downwind in the coming hours or days.

Nick Bassill, the director of the State Weather Risk Communication Center at the University at Albany in New York, said weather balloons are the backbone, or ground truth, of forecasting.

“Our center was providing a weather forecast for Easter egg hunts sponsored by local cities... and we are unexpectedly getting rain this morning that we weren’t expecting,” Bassill said. “I’m not saying that’s because of weather balloon launches, but it makes us wonder, hey, was our forecast just a little bit worse because we’re missing that critical data upstream?”

Staffing cuts are having effects on National Weather Service offices beyond weather balloon launches.

Last week, the service’s Sacramento, California, office sent a memo to local media partners saying that it would no longer answer public phones, that it would reduce issuance of area forecast discussions to once a day and that it would reduce overnight staffing, among other changes.

The cuts prompted former National Weather Service Director Joe Friday, who lives in Edmond, Oklahoma, to write to his senators and congressional representative, saying in an interview that he expected forecasts to worsen with fewer weather balloons and a “Swiss cheese” staff.

“They can talk about restructuring, changing the work standards and all that. That’s all gobbledygook, that’s all bureaucratese,” Friday said, adding that he is paying closer attention to the radar himself, from his home in Tornado Alley. “I do feel — threatened is the wrong word — I feel a little more uncomfortable today. … Being a trained meteorologist, I watch that a little more closely than I used to.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com