Even if you don’t know what the National Weather Service does in southeast Wisconsin, you’ve probably heard their work. Maybe it was the alarm blaring warning you of a tornado in the area. Or the weather updates you can find on your radio.
“A lot of what we do is trying to keep people safe and let them know what’s going to happen with the weather,” says Tim Halbach, who is the warning coordinator meteorologist for Milwaukee’s National Weather Service office.
The local office, like most NWS officers, collects information and data on the weather and creates forecast models for the public. Halbach says in his 20 years of experience with NWS, the technology and ability to communicate weather events is night and day.
“2011 was a really bad year for tornados … and it was a soul-searching spot for us because we just lost all these people,” Halbach says about the Joplin, Missouri tornado that killed 158 people. “We had warnings, we had forecasts and it’s like what are we doing wrong. The answer was we need to be more directly talking to people.”
That was exactly the case this spring with the spate of Dodge County tornadoes. NWS provided updated forecast models every 30 minutes, ample time to make life-saving decisions. Halbach says the goal for sending weather warnings is 10 minutes, but with the advances in technology and research, he estimates being able to give an hour or two within the next few years.
But that technology and research isn’t guaranteed.
Federal cuts from the Trump administration eliminated almost 600 positions earlier this year. At the time, meteorologists warned of the damage it could have on weather forecasting and being able to give adequate lead time for deadly weather events — like the flash floods experienced in Kerrville, Texas. Since June, the administration has been trying to hire back over 100 employees to "stabilize operations."
“They took the hammer to the system and now they said, 'Oops, maybe we shouldn’t have done that,'" says Paul Roebber, longtime local meteorologist.
Roebber is a distinguished professor emeritus at University Wisconsin-Milwaukee and is regarded as one of the leading forecast experts in the U.S. He says the cuts are already affecting the NWS and their ability to do their work. He points to weather balloons, which are routinely launched by local NWS offices.
“A number of offices who’ve been understaffed have stopped launching weather balloons, or not launching them as frequently,” Roebber says. “And that’s a fundamental data set and not replaceable.”
This creates holes in weather observations, which decreases confidence in weather forecasts. He also says that it could impact some offices' ability to staff 24/7, which NWS offices currently do.
“Obviously this is a big problem because a lot of weather happens at night,” Roebber says. “That’s when it’s most deadly because most of the time people are sleeping and not hearing weather warnings.”
