Congress cutting NWS budget?

[ATL_Militarypolice]

Mods feel free to move to a different thread if needed, even though it deals with politics it also deals the weather, and is something I feel needs to be addressed.

The house is wanting to pass a bill that will cut funding for the NWS by 30% come the second half of 2011.

As hurricane and tornado seasons approach, funding for the NWS will be nearly 30 percent less than the first half of 2011, if the Continuing Resolution proposed by the House majority is enacted. Congress's move will necessitate work furloughs and force rolling closures of Weather Warning Offices across the country.

The National Hurricane Center, the Storm Prediction Center, the Aviation Weather Center, the Tsunami Warning Centers, River Forecast Centers and local Weather Forecast Offices located in communities across the nation are all victims of Congress's budget cut.

Snippets from the article that really standout.

"When the budget blade drops on the NWS, it will be felt around the country," said NWSEO President Dan Sobien. "In the next hurricane, flood, tornado or wildfire, lives will be lost and people will ask what went wrong. Congress's cuts and the devastation to the wellbeing of our nation's citizens are dangerously wrong."

Delays in replacement satellites run the risk of losing key weather data that can be obtained no other way. "This information is vital for weather modeling and essential for accurate tornado watches and warnings," said Sobien.

We thought models were bad now.

Reduced funding will mean upper air observations currently made twice a day might be reduced to every other day. Buoy and surface weather observations, the backbone of most of the weather and warning systems, may be temporarily or permanently discontinued.

source

[Riptide]

Government spending is being cut across the board. Mabye it will prolong the inevitable collapse of our "beloved" country.

[wxdudemike]

I think there are other areas they could cut severely first besides something as critical as the NWS.

[Ed Lizard]

Its a press release from a union office. Could be true. Or might be a warning shot fired to ensure the NOAA budget is spared. Hopefully the latter.

There are a lot of places the budget can be trimmed without cutting more important areas like national security and the NWS.

The National Hurricane Center is not immune to these cuts as furloughs and staffing cuts will add strain to the program. The Hurricane Hunter Jet, which provides lifesaving data and helps determine a hurricane's path, could also be eliminated.

Well, I guess a turbo-prop is technically a jet, if they are talking about either the Orion or the Hercules. The Gulfstream is a jet. I drank a Heineken on a G-IV once. Not a Department of Commerce or government G-IV...

[AtticaFanatica]

Government spending is being cut across the board. Mabye it will prolong the inevitable collapse of our "beloved" country.

Oh, this might be good.

[Ed Lizard]

What most people think of as the 'Hurricane Hunters' are Department of Defense, not Department of Commerce.

Just a union boss drawing a line in the sand trying to protect his employees. A little heavy on the fear and hyperbole, but I hope this works. I doubt even hard core Randians oppose having an NWS.

[MN Transplant]

Oh, this might be good.

It'll get shipped way before it gets good

It seems unlikely that cuts of this magnitude would pass the dem held Senate and Presidency. What is looking quite possible is a gov't shutdown. I assume that NWS employees are considered essential personnel, thereby exempting them from the furloughs. What happened in '96?

[stormguy80]

The number of WFO's can and will be cut - not a question of if but when - probably not this time but within the next 10-20 years I would bet . 122 offices made sense in the old days when forecasts had to be hand typed but with the GFE you could easily have far fewer offices as this allows the more efficient mass production of forecasts over a large region. The weather Channel uses a similar tool and only has 1 or 2 forecasters working at a time on the whole country!

I was about to post the article - was wondering the validity of the information. I have emailed my office - see what they say.

[wlfpack81]

Yea GFE makes it easier for forecasting in terms of how much area you can cover but there's still the issue of workflow & how much time someone would be able to devote to an area if they're now having to forecast for multi-regions. In addition you have to remember it's more than just forecasting at WFO's, there's also Met-watching, especially in terms of severe weather. The idea of one met office having to now cover 2 states (just a theoretical example) during a severe tornadic outbreak for example, but at the level of staffing that was normally scene when you had multi-WFO's per state....that doesn't sit well with me.

[SacrydDreamz]

A 30% cut would be extremely destructive but as stated by others this seems unlikely. A cut on the order of 10%, while large, is likely manageable. Most government agencies and programs could stand to be trimmed 10%.

[SacrydDreamz]

Yea GFE makes it easier for forecasting in terms of how much area you can cover but there's still the issue of workflow & how much time someone would be able to devote to an area if they're now having to forecast for multi-regions. In addition you have to remember it's more than just forecasting at WFO's, there's also Met-watching, especially in terms of severe weather. The idea of one met office having to now cover 2 states (just a theoretical example) during a severe tornadic outbreak for example, but at the level of staffing that was normally scene when you had multi-WFO's per state....that doesn't sit well with me.

Keep in mind you're discussing an event that unfolds rather infrequently... besides, if you have two offices and one is cut, it's likely that some of the staff is absorbed into the surviving office. The level of staffing at each office would probably go up a bit, provided that cuts in the ballpark of 30% are not enacted... severe weather events can be dealt with effectively with fewer offices, especially with current advances in technology.

[Ed Lizard]

The number of WFO's can and will be cut - not a question of if but when - probably not this time but within the next 10-20 years I would bet . 122 offices made sense in the old days when forecasts had to be hand typed but with the GFE you could easily have far fewer offices as this allows the more efficient mass production of forecasts over a large region. The weather Channel uses a similar tool and only has 1 or 2 forecasters working at a time on the whole country!

No idea if this is the reason why, but TWC replaced the local NWS forecasts on their "on the eights" about 2 or 3 years ago, and the local HGX office puts out a more accurate product, especially in NOWCAST situations, than the people in Atlanta do.

I think mention of cuts to NHC is a scare tactic. I thought the idea was to get back to a pre-TARP and Stimulus 2008 budget, and I don't think NOAA/NWS saw much of a budget increase, so I don't know why they'd see much of a budget cut.

[isohume]

Yea GFE makes it easier for forecasting in terms of how much area you can cover but there's still the issue of workflow & how much time someone would be able to devote to an area if they're now having to forecast for multi-regions. In addition you have to remember it's more than just forecasting at WFO's, there's also Met-watching, especially in terms of severe weather. The idea of one met office having to now cover 2 states (just a theoretical example) during a severe tornadic outbreak for example, but at the level of staffing that was normally scene when you had multi-WFO's per state....that doesn't sit well with me.

Not only this...there are the wfo specific programs to consider. COOP, Outreach, Media Relations, Decision Support, Fire Wx, Aviation, Marine, etc. A reduction in offices will be hard to do attm and still account for the maintenence of these programs. General Johnson tried to implement CON-OPs (a grouping of wfo offices) a few years ago and promptly got fired by NOAA. I doubt we see much, if any, change in the org structure through my career at least.

[stormguy80]

oh I'm aware of these things which is why you could never get by doing things the way the weather channel does it. but you could get by on fewer offices - you would just have to cut in a way that was efficient. For example, simply cutting 30% of the offices but keeping staffing levels the same at the existing ones would not work well for the reasons you stated. You'd have to cut more than 30% of the offices but have increased staffing levels at the offices that remained so that you could allocate the work flow in a manageble way. Taken to this extreme, if you had just one office with a fairly large staff on any given day you'd have plenty of people to work on the areas where active weather was occuring and then you could just let the models handle areas under high pressure where few edits would be needed anyway. The current system is inefficient since on a day when, for example, a big storm was effecting the northeast with high pressure in the west you still have about the same number of staff working at each office - the active area is pushed to their limit and may be understaffed or at least stressed from the work load meanwhile the areas under high pressure, I would argue, are over staffed on those days. make sense?

Yea GFE makes it easier for forecasting in terms of how much area you can cover but there's still the issue of workflow & how much time someone would be able to devote to an area if they're now having to forecast for multi-regions. In addition you have to remember it's more than just forecasting at WFO's, there's also Met-watching, especially in terms of severe weather. The idea of one met office having to now cover 2 states (just a theoretical example) during a severe tornadic outbreak for example, but at the level of staffing that was normally scene when you had multi-WFO's per state....that doesn't sit well with me.

[MN Transplant]

A 30% cut would be extremely destructive but as stated by others this seems unlikely. A cut on the order of 10%, while large, is likely manageable. Most government agencies and programs could stand to be trimmed 10%.

The problem is that the House is trying to enact the cuts this FY. There is no way that the full year CR passes before Mar. 1, so that means that they will be trying to fit the cuts into half of the year. So, if NOAA ops is down 10-15%, since they've probably been working under close to a flat funding assumption for 6 months (hope they built in contingencies), then the magnitude of the cuts for the latter half of the year would be doubled. So, that's where the 30% comes from, though that is probably a high estimate (consider the source).

[Riptide]

It'll get shipped way before it gets good

It seems unlikely that cuts of this magnitude would pass the dem held Senate and Presidency. What is looking quite possible is a gov't shutdown. I assume that NWS employees are considered essential personnel, thereby exempting them from the furloughs. What happened in '96?

This one made me laugh, congrats. Our national debt is now larger than the GDP...

[eyewall]

This should do wonders for the Meteorology job market

[stormguy80]

Yes, it will be a very bad situation far worse. See my post about reconsidering majoring in meteorology. This is exactly the kind of thing I had in mind when posting it. Things are bad but if anything they will only get worse. We have too many mets at a time when the computers can do most of the work. Before anyone gets defensive about that, just think - to a lay person can it really be proved through stats that it takes the number of forecasters that we currently have to make sufficiently good forecasts under most circumstances? I know mets add value, everyone else here know's this too, but can you prove it too the people who are making the decisions about what to cut? Anyway, I'm out. off on a trip until next Monday.

This should do wonders for the Meteorology job market

[AtticaFanatica]

The number of WFO's can and will be cut - not a question of if but when - probably not this time but within the next 10-20 years I would bet . 122 offices made sense in the old days when forecasts had to be hand typed but with the GFE you could easily have far fewer offices as this allows the more efficient mass production of forecasts over a large region. The weather Channel uses a similar tool and only has 1 or 2 forecasters working at a time on the whole country!

And their forecasts are terrible!

[SacrydDreamz]

The problem is that the House is trying to enact the cuts this FY. There is no way that the full year CR passes before Mar. 1, so that means that they will be trying to fit the cuts into half of the year. So, if NOAA ops is down 10-15%, since they've probably been working under close to a flat funding assumption for 6 months (hope they built in contingencies), then the magnitude of the cuts for the latter half of the year would be doubled. So, that's where the 30% comes from, though that is probably a high estimate (consider the source).

I was speaking about an effective cut...And then spending should be frozen.

[Symblized]

At least for next year, the House is trying to cut budgets all over the place. No idea what the Senate will want to do, but it will probably fall in line with the President, who is actually asking for a very slight increase. The fight will be between the two.

Here's Obama's FY2012 budget request for NWS (lots of good detail on how NWS spends its dough):

http://www.corporate...ervice_FY12.pdf

And a one-page highlight for those with short attention spans:

http://www.corporate...2_One_pager.pdf

[wxdudemike]

Yes, it will be a very bad situation far worse. See my post about reconsidering majoring in meteorology. This is exactly the kind of thing I had in mind when posting it. Things are bad but if anything they will only get worse. We have too many mets at a time when the computers can do most of the work. Before anyone gets defensive about that, just think - to a lay person can it really be proved through stats that it takes the number of forecasters that we currently have to make sufficiently good forecasts under most circumstances? I know mets add value, everyone else here know's this too, but can you prove it too the people who are making the decisions about what to cut? Anyway, I'm out. off on a trip until next Monday.

I'm way to passionate about weather to not major in meteorology, but this is one of the reasons why I'll be sticking to non NWS jobs because the outlook for working for the gov't is quite grim.

[Ed Lizard]

Other than the head of the NWS employees union saying this, and throwing out threats of the NHC being cut and the Hurricane Hunters eliminated, is there any hard evidence Congress actually intends to cut the NOAA/NWS budget?

I still think someone is trying to get phone calls made to Congressmen, preemptively, like a vaccine...

[mnweather]

Keep in mind you're discussing an event that unfolds rather infrequently... besides, if you have two offices and one is cut, it's likely that some of the staff is absorbed into the surviving office. The level of staffing at each office would probably go up a bit, provided that cuts in the ballpark of 30% are not enacted... severe weather events can be dealt with effectively with fewer offices, especially with current advances in technology.

Wouldn't they have to add more workstations for more people in the office or a bigger office in general?

[MGorse]

Other than the head of the NWS employees union saying this, and throwing out threats of the NHC being cut and the Hurricane Hunters eliminated, is there any hard evidence Congress actually intends to cut the NOAA/NWS budget?

I still think someone is trying to get phone calls made to Congressmen, preemptively, like a vaccine...

The president of the NWS employees union is speaking up because of the NWS employees that his organization protects. The proposed budget cuts are there with lots on the table, thus his response. While this could be a worse case scenario, it is scary that this stuff is being said because of potentially drastic budget cuts.

[MGorse]

TWC does not issue hundreds of products like our local offices do - Haz weather outlooks, severe weather warnings, lake and river stages, fire weather - the list is endless. The number of products that require human interaction is quite large.

Pat Spoden (from our local office) said that it costs about $1 to perhaps as much as $7 per tax payer - per year - to run NOAA. Unsure where he found that statistic.

A few years ago they were discussing Super NWS Offices - offices that covered a much larger geographical region.

Yeah, this was known as CONOPS and was shot down.

[MN Transplant]

Other than the head of the NWS employees union saying this, and throwing out threats of the NHC being cut and the Hurricane Hunters eliminated, is there any hard evidence Congress actually intends to cut the NOAA/NWS budget?

I still think someone is trying to get phone calls made to Congressmen, preemptively, like a vaccine...

The cuts list is out on the house appropriations website: http://appropriations.house.gov/_files/ProgramCutsFY2011ContinuingResolution.pdf

NOAA Operations, Research and Facilities -$454.3M

Since the FY10 enacted number for that area was $3.412B, the cut number reflects a decrease of 13.3%. Since this is not prorated, the effective 2nd half cut for FY11 is 26%. These cut details aren't drilled down to the NWS level, but you can imagine that they wouldn't be spared.

The remaining competing issues are that the more conservative tea party members are looking for an even more drastic cut this year, at least $20B more gov't-wide (see the amendment proceedings taking place now for HR.1). But of course the democrats aren't on board, and they still control the Senate and White House.

[HKY_WX]

You almost have to expect the unexpected in this economic climate. I hate to see it, because there are lot of good people employed in the public sector. Teachers, police, etc are all going to be hurt very badly in the near future. Met's are probably not that high on the list of the congressional conscience unfortunately.

[Turtle]

Not only this...there are the wfo specific programs to consider. COOP, Outreach, Media Relations, Decision Support, Fire Wx, Aviation, Marine, etc. A reduction in offices will be hard to do attm and still account for the maintenence of these programs. General Johnson tried to implement CON-OPs (a grouping of wfo offices) a few years ago and promptly got fired by NOAA. I doubt we see much, if any, change in the org structure through my career at least.

<on soapbox>

This is one MAJOR concern, as all these areas in our office have some sort of outreach. We've done presentations for marine and aviation organizations, tours of our office to a wide variety of organizations, co-op station visits (which should be done twice yearly throughout the county warning area)...you name it, we've done it! Oh, can't forget StormReady recertifications, which are done every three years. How do we do all that, plus forecasting, with fewer people and resources? Don't ask me!

We have had very little outreach scheduled since September because of short staffing. We lost two forecasters to transfer, and were FINALLY filled in January. One position was open since last June! Now, we are supposed to be hosting one of the stops for the Hurricane Awareness Tour in May. Will this happen? Who knows.

If anything like this budget passes, I can see all outreach ending, period. This will affect schools, civic organizations, SKYWARN training, you name it. Talk about an enormous hit to our visibility! The biggest hit I see is in education, especially in the schools. They've taken huge hits over the years, and this would be another major blow. We also work with teacher organizations locally and NSTA (NOAA has a booth at their regional and national conferences every year, and provide HUGE amounts of educational materials to them). I can see this vanishing.

If you ask me, very shortsighted. But, I know what we will hear...all government agencies will be hit, and hit hard.

Does anyone want to fool around with public safety? One has to wonder...

<off soapbox>

--Turtle

[Rainshadow]

oh I'm aware of these things which is why you could never get by doing things the way the weather channel does it. but you could get by on fewer offices - you would just have to cut in a way that was efficient. For example, simply cutting 30% of the offices but keeping staffing levels the same at the existing ones would not work well for the reasons you stated. You'd have to cut more than 30% of the offices but have increased staffing levels at the offices that remained so that you could allocate the work flow in a manageble way. Taken to this extreme, if you had just one office with a fairly large staff on any given day you'd have plenty of people to work on the areas where active weather was occuring and then you could just let the models handle areas under high pressure where few edits would be needed anyway. The current system is inefficient since on a day when, for example, a big storm was effecting the northeast with high pressure in the west you still have about the same number of staff working at each office - the active area is pushed to their limit and may be understaffed or at least stressed from the work load meanwhile the areas under high pressure, I would argue, are over staffed on those days. make sense?

Except, forecasts go out seven days and what if there are two significant weather events on days 3 and 7, what if there was a major meteorological event the day before, its not that cut and dry. Just because the weather is quiet today, doesn't mean you are necessarily not doing much. There are also focal point duties and there is always ongoing training which are done on quieter days. Offices are not staffed for adverse weather. Its obvious that the fiscal house has to get in order. There are sacred cows that are not being touched , but this is the equivalent of solving the problem you are having with your wrist by having the Congressional doctors chop off your arm.