From CFACT

By Joe Bastardi

“There have been several comments on social media about the lack of balloon launches on Thursday, along with the usual snide political remarks claiming that the DOGE cuts are impacting the accuracy of the forecast.”

As if there is shock that could have been prevented except for the cuts.

Heck, it’s like Casablanca, only with the weather. Shocking that gambling was going on in Rick’s place. I guess so are tornadoes.

As far as blaming the administration for cuts, round up the usual suspects

Before I go on, I want to say that some of the cuts that have been made are ones I am against. I believe much of this is collateral damage from the aggressive push of the climate change agenda. The new team came in with a blunt hammer, and as a result, some very valuable research has been cut. I had no input on any of this.

Again, if NOAA had been actively promoting its weather-related research and forecasting progress so the public was aware of it — rather than constantly yelling about climate change — the backlash we’re now seeing might not have happened.

It has hit me hard personally: the Physical Science Division Reanalysis is no longer being updated. Interesting, isn’t it? The biggest advocate for using the past to counter the hysteria about the future has been kicked in the gut by these cuts — along with many other old-school, analog-based forecasters.

I can only imagine what some of the other researchers (tornadoes, hurricanes, etc) must be thinking.

But since I did a case study on this tornado event for all to see, I feel I have the gravitas to speak on this matter,

The moaning and groaning about the lack of balloon launches for the Thursday outbreak is nonsense. By extension, so is bashing that aspect of cuts.

You could see this coming, and I showed this a week ago.

Predictability too low?

Speak for yourself. Actually, since they did not take meteo 434 at PSU 50 years ago, for whoever is putting this out, it was. But not if you used pattern recognition and had the relatively simple parameters to line this up.

The outside red line is a slight risk, the second area enhanced, the inside was moderate.

This is what happened btw

Without getting too deep into the details, the parameters I teach use simple surface wet-bulb temperatures and sea-level pressures in March, April, and May as quick-and-dirty ways to predict this.

Why? Because if you have those values at the surface, you’re very likely to have the necessary support throughout the entire atmospheric column. The method relies on understanding the typical relationships between average sea-level pressure (SLP) and wet-bulb temperatures at this time of year, and what it takes to produce them.

So when you see a strong trough trying to emerge into increasingly warm, moist air, and you understand what the overall pattern is doing, you can quickly sketch out the broad outlines of what’s coming. Simple, right?

Actually, yes — and that’s exactly the problem today. If it’s simple, anyone can do it, and that threatens the authority of those who want to keep forecasting mysterious and complicated.  Some is, but not all.. I can teach this method to any high school freshman. Then he’ll start posting forecasts online and drive a lot of people crazy who don’t want some kid challenging their forecasts.

I say bring it on. Heck in wrestling, we have high school kids beating world champions. So why not in the weather?

In any case, a slight risk is where Sea Level Pressure is below 1008, and wet bulbs above 65. The lower the pressure and the higher the wet bulb, obviously, the higher the risk as the air is more buoyant.

So if you are looking at this pattern a week away ( like I showed in the blizzard case study), you set it up and hone in as you get closer

No balloon measurements in the area that got hit the hardest, right?

Well, why should that be an issue 6 hours away, it sure wasn’t if you were looking at the old school method. It was what I anticipated a week before would develop.

Look at the SLP forecast for 18z

Never mind the wet bulbs, the dew points were way up there ( meaning the wet bulbs were even higher)

So if you dissected the pattern a week out and suspected this setup was going to develop, you didn’t need balloon launches the morning of the event to tell you to watch out.

Obviously, our risk assessment a week in advance was higher than the NWS risk on the day of the event — we were already at moderate risk, while they only went to enhanced

But maybe if they used the criteria, simply having wet bulb and pressure, they would have had it. Since wet bulbs got into the 70s and pressures under 1000 mb, that is naturally a higher risk than the start of the risk area at 1008 and 65.

But you don’t need balloon launches on the day of the event to tell you what could break loose. The required parameters were already in place well before these outbreaks.

We’re in the heart of tornado season, and the overall pattern — with the MJO in Phase 1, which is historically linked to more extreme weather in the U.S. — was clearly in place. As I demonstrated for anyone who was paying attention, you could see it coming a week out, and on the day of the event, it was all there.

But this is part and parcel of what has happened in my field. Comments like “people care more about illegal immigration than cutting weather balloon launches” are perfect examples. Or the idea that launching more balloons on the day of an event — even when all the key parameters are already in place using methods developed 50 years ago — would have somehow made a real difference.

So, they circle back to politics. The notion that weather and climate are simply political tools, or that meteorologists are complaining about missing balloon data when a pattern has been screaming “look out” from a week in advance (and into next week), shows just how far we’ve sunk.

The weather and climate should never be dragged into the cesspool of politics. That happens largely because political operatives can’t keep their hands off anything they believe might advance their agenda. Look at what politics has done to our field. Think about the implications of people claiming that because a couple of balloon launches were cut, an otherwise obvious forecast was compromised. Do you think for one second that if weather and climate hadn’t been dragged into that cesspool, this event — like so many others — would have drawn any political comments at all?

Heh, they came into our house, I didn’t go into theirs.

Again, I am dead set against some of the cuts I’ve seen, and I’ve said so loudly. Perhaps that’s why I haven’t been asked to comment on them — even as the most experienced daily private-sector global forecaster. I don’t know.

But I do know this: the recently announced EPA advisory committee does not include a single global, everyday forecaster. My question is simple — how in the world are you going to make sound decisions about the environment without anyone who actually forecasts the weather, when weather is what happens in the environment every single day?

But as far as the lack of balloon launches is concerned, given the pattern and how clearly you could see this setup coming from far out, complaining about it and then linking it to political bashing is absurd. You did not need balloon launches to see this coming.

Yeah, shocking that on April 23rd, with the pattern so obvious, tornadoes occurred and weren’t predicted perfectly because of the lack of balloon launches.

I’m shocked, SHOCKED to find tornadoes going on around the US in April. If only we had launched more weather balloons.