Since the Trump administration slashed 20% of the workforce at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration last spring, weather balloons key to developing forecasts haven’t worked in concert, prompting meteorologists to debate the reliability of weather predictions.
Today, National Weather Service launch maps indicate about 1 in 4 daily weather balloon sites in the continental US launch balloons at a different time than the rest of the world, resulting in delays in the daily computer models meteorologists use to make their predictions. At some sites, weather balloons don’t get launched at all.
“If you decrease the amount of data, there is no scenario in which the model output would improve,” said meteorologist Paul Gross, who recently retired from WDIV-TV in Detroit after a 40-year career and now acts as a consultant. “Weather forecasting has undoubtedly suffered because of this loss in upper air data.”
But Greg Mann, science and operations officer at the National Weather Service in Detroit, maintains “there is no detrimental impact for having any off-cycle (weather balloon) data collection.”
According to Mann, “there may be situations where the off-cycle data offers important insight.”
While meteorologists have yet to miss any major storms in Michigan because of the cuts, the National Weather Service was criticized for inadequate forecasts before deadly flooding in Texas and a typhoon that struck Alaska. The disaster in Alaska occurred amid a severe cut in upper air soundings in the region.
Weather balloons are some of the oldest instruments of meteorology, providing forecasters with critical data about the upper atmosphere. Hundreds of weather balloons are launched around the globe at the same time, twice per day, feeding upper atmospheric data into the computer models that meteorologists use to predict the weather.
University of Michigan meteorologist Frank Marsik said missing data would impact daily 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. computer computer simulations, but would be valuable for 1 p.m. and 1 a.m. simulations.
Still, Gross said forecast models are strongest when the data can “all work in concert to give us an overall look at things.” With some balloons launching at off-cycle hours, holes in the data network appear, he said.
“Missing data can impact the models’ interpretation of, for example, strength and positioning of the jet stream,” he said. “But the thing is, any error you have in the initial conditions is magnified as you get further and further down the road.”
As a weather system moves across the US, those data gaps can turn into large data errors by the time the system makes it to the Great Lakes region. Nearly all of the off-cycle weather balloon launches occur west of Michigan, which is also where much of our weather comes from.
The National Weather Service balloon launch station in Green Bay, Wisconsin, conducts both of its daily soundings at off-hours.
Weather Service meteorologist Kurt Kotenberg said the Green Bay office has had to “temporarily adjust services” to accommodate staffing shortages. His office is one of the sites launching weather balloons at off-cycle hours.
He said it’s too early to tell what effect the changes will have because “we don’t have long-term baseline data to compare it against.”
Rich Thompson at the NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center plots weather balloon launches across the nation and utilizes that information to predict storms.
“It's hard to quantify” how off-cycle launches affect the forecast, he said. “The only way to know those changes is to have the missing data.”
Putting weather models to practical use is Joe Charlevoix, who has been forecasting the weather for WPBN/WTOM TV in Traverse City for 23 years.
He agrees “the drop in upper air soundings nationally … will impact forecast models.”
“If a clipper is supposed to come in Tuesday morning,” Charlevoix imagined, “and let’s say we get to Tuesday and it’s more Tuesday afternoon when the snow arrives, it’s really hard for me to determine, ‘Was that because of the loss of upper air data that the model was off? Or was that going to happen no matter what?’”
‘Weather certainty’?
With the changes in weather data being collected by the government, private interests have tried to fill in the gaps.
Commercial airlines, who rely heavily on Weather Service forecasts, are chipping in to close critical gaps in upper atmospheric data by carrying “downlinks” during their flights.
Also attempting to plug the holes is Windborne, a private weather balloon company based in Palo Alto, California.
Acknowledging that the weather “affects everything from agriculture and shipping to emergency response and disaster preparedness,” Windborne claims to have built the “the most accurate weather forecast in the world” using their “autonomous constellation of weather balloons.”
“We’re striving for ‘weather certainty’,” said spokesperson Ellie Yoon. “Can you imagine knowing what the weather was going to be like 30 days in advance?”
Republicans have long argued that more private companies should be relied on to produce forecast data. Cuts to the National Weather Service were part of Trump’s broad effort to trim federal spending that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) claims saved the federal government $214 billion.
Windborne contends the US has “underinvested in weather data for years,” and “the economic benefits of every data point collected far outweigh the cost of collecting it.
‘The quality of employees’
Despite the diminished upper atmospheric data provided by the Weather Service, Blake Harm, meteorologist for WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids, said the Weather Service employees in his region have “remained exemplary in issuing life-saving warnings.”
“I can't recall a time in which the product from our NWS office ever suffered, which is a commendation to the quality of employees there,” he said.
Both Charlevoix and Gross echoed these sentiments.
The federal government is in the process of rehiring hundreds of Weather Service positions that were cut. NOAA Deputy Director of Communications Chris Vaccaro said “the NWS continues to fortify the front lines of the agency by hiring mission-critical positions where increases in staffing levels have been deemed beneficial.”
According to Vaccaro, they’ve advertised 184 of the 286 positions they’re authorized to rehire and hope to have those positions filled by September 2026.
While staffing shortages continue, the weather balloon launches that meteorologists rely on to make accurate weather forecasts remain in a state of uncertainty.
“The current staffing shortages and loss of data, I believe in my heart, are temporary,” said Gross. “I don’t know when it will get resolved … I think we are just going to have to gut it out with some restrictions on what we are able to do. But I think in the future we are going to get back to having full support of our science in this country.”
