As part of their program to completely eliminate the federal government, the latest act of random destruction and intellectual vandalism by Musk, Trump, and Co. is the gradual cancellation of national weather forecasting centers.
As my friend
@drshepherd2013.bsky.social
says, asking why we need a National Weather Service when we have apps and the Weather Channel is like asking why we need potato farmers when we can buy fries at McDonalds.
This is going to be very unpopular here in the Midwest. The weather is the primary focus of conversations around these parts!
It might be a matter of more import in southern coastal regions, but they won’t be talking about it — they’ll be dead, or washed out, or fleeing inland.
Straight out of the facist playbook.
I read somewhere that, no, Mussolini did not get the trains running on time. What he did was make it illegal to report late trains. That strikes me as a good analogy.
Next, all GPS satellites will be destroyed. Why do we need them when everyone has GPS on their phones.
Weather has been a hobby for me since I was about 10 y/o. I have always been fascinated with severe weather. I love blizzards and hurricanes. Because of DOGE, how much destruction and deaths will there be in tornado alley? All Red states. Hurricane season in the south (mostly red states) will become an adventure.
Farmers are being hurt (red states), food prices are skyrocketing (everybody), Wall Street is on eggshells (everybody), disease is spreading (red states), the SS system may collapse (older Americans and the disabled), Medicaid and other safety net will also fail (the vulnerable), millions losing health care benefits (the vulnerable), inflation is heading the wrong way, friends are enemies and enemies are now friends, and now we will not have severe weather alerts in time to save lives, maybe the apocalypse is closer than we realize. And we can thank the religious zealots who voted en masse for this.
Currently, all cruise lines use this data to calculate storm paths, and to move cruise ships to safety in advance. Until now, weather damage has been rare. In 3 months, when hurricane season begins, the profitability of this industry will crater.
Great way to rescue the economy from the Trump depression!
After this they will go after the US Post Office and “privatize it”.
So some oligarches somewhere can make more money running the Post Office with more expensive mail and poorer service.
Which means they will close a lot of the smaller post offices in rural areas.
Which is going to impact rural areas negatively pretty hard.
A lot of small towns in rural areas are slowly dying out.
People move away, businesses close, the school closes, the churches close down, the bar closes down. Usually the last business standing is…the local Post Office.
Which serves a real need in rural communities.
That is where all your mail order and online packages are delivered to.
That is where your Social Security check is sent to.
USPS can’t get much worse. I live in central Illinois, here’s an abbreviated tracking path for a package I’m expecting:
Origin: Detroit, MI
Arrived: Cincinnati, OH
Arrived: Champaign, IL (regional distribution 40 miles from me)
Arrived: Salt Lake City, UT where it sat for two days until someone figured out it was 1300 miles from where it should be
This is a regular occurrence for me. Package gets to Champaign, then shows up two days later 1000 miles away.
Who needs weather models and supercomputer algorithms when you have the opinions and reckonings of salt-of-the-earth Americans?
Luckily for the farmers, the loss of climate and weather data will reduce yields. That will help them deal with the loss of major export markets in China, Mexico and Canada.
Elon Musk is trying to cut half the staff of the Social Security Administration.
That is going to hit his MAGA base pretty hard.
It is mostly old white people with lower incomes.
40% of US retired people depend only on Social Security. Even more depend mostly on Social Security.
I really don’t see the point of this move anyway.
It’s not going to stop Social Security.
It will just lower the level of service and make it harder for people to collect their Social Security benefits.
For the few that don’t know.
Social Security has zero to do with the Federal budget or Federal deficit.
It is a self funding program independent of the Federal finances.
It doesn’t cost the Federal government anything.
The supercomputers aren’t a big deal, there’s other models around. If the US wants to outsource weather prediction to Europe then ok, sure, it can do that.
What is a big deal is the data handling. Weather agencies worldwide depend on US data to run their models.
Bruce @ 4
The demographic that like cruises are among the more affluent, so there may be some non-trivial pushback after millions have had their cruises ruined.
.
The Trumpean villain in charge of the post cannot easily be fired, but I note that Biden et al did not fight very hard to get rid of him either. Lyndon Johnson knew how to play the game in an effective manner. Current Democrats not so much.
raven: I don’t understand how you think cutting staff and making it harder for people to collect payments isn’t part of stopping social security. That’s clearly exactly what they are in the process of doing, after decades of trying.
Elon Musk: Hold my beer…
Yeah, I know the USPS has its problems.
The last online package I ordered was sent to the wrong post office about 30 miles away.
The tracking data showed that an hour later it was sent back to the company that sent it.
Who then, called it “undeliverable” and refunded my purchase money.
All I got was package not deliverable and a reversal of charges.
I reordered it and this time it came to my post office address.
Not good but it can and probably will get worse in the future.
It seems clear that magat tRUMP is pulling a similar stunt to when he said COVID will go away if you stop testing. The fossil fuel fuckheads caused the climate disaster and the magat tRUMP will say, oh, there’s no climate change because there are no reports of it from NOAA.
And, the destruction of the usps was by the cowardly thug dejoy (who ran away when he saw magat tRUMP coming), not the workers and magat tRUMP will destroy it further.
@12 – numerobis – raven: I don’t understand how you think cutting staff and making it harder for people to collect payments isn’t part of stopping social security. That’s clearly exactly what they are in the process of doing, after decades of trying.
Totally agree, their plan is to make SS unfunctional causing people to hate it. When the hate reaches a point, they can comfortably eliminate it.
SS may hang on for some time as the system, once you are in it, is mostly automated, but they will find ways to disrupt the automation. New people will probably face hell getting into the system. And forget it if there is an error in your account, that may never get corrected.
How I am going to fly kites in tornadoes if I don’t know when the tornadoes are coming?
You may be right here.
I’m just having a hard time believing the MAGAts can be so dumb and evil.
.1. I do some volunteer work with a group of Senior and Disabled retired people.
All of them rely on Social Security for all or almost all of their income.
Income that they earned, that they paid into Social Security for decades.
It’s enough to survive on.
None of them have cars. They can’t afford it with the SS checks.
Without Social Security, these old disabled people wouldn’t have anything.
There isn’t much in the way of the social safety net behind Social Security.
.2. I’m also having a hard time believing that the MAGAts that voted for Trump and the GOP can be so stupid.
They are one of the groups heavily dependent on Social Security and Medicare.
Lower income, lower educated old white people.
.3. The fact is that Social Security is a wildly successful self funding program.
It is also very popular.
It is also something that huge numbers of old people heavily rely on for their survival and well being.
It’s hard to imagine that even Trump voters will vote for this sort of attack on their own money in their own retirement program.
Is it worth it to vote for Trump so you can live in poverty on the street or in your car?
Then again, that just may be my lack of ability to see how important it is for these people to hate.
“why we need a National Weather Service when we have apps and the Weather Channel is like asking why we need potato farmers when we can buy fries at McDonalds.”
Brought to you by the same people who think we don’t need the “mainstream news” when we have social media, which generates little to no actual information sourced from reality, and instead merely rehashes and poorly critiques “mainstream news” stories.
I’m way beyond shocked or appalled by what is going on in the USA.
I’m a medical researcher.
And the Trump regime is attacking both science and health care.
In my very Blue area of my Blue state on the West coast, I don’t even know anyone who voted for Trump. Trump voters just aren’t part of my life.
So a few questions for anyone.
Do you know any Trump voters that are having second thoughts or regrets?
These GOP attacks on Medicaid, Social Security, the Weather Forecasting service, Post Office, and especially the economy with those tariffs that went into effect today are going to wreck a whole lot of people’s lives.
A whole lot of those people are going to be Red state voters who voted for Trump.
Are they really OK with that?
I can’t imagine why they would be but that may well just be a failure of imagination on my part.
My daughter is in the middle of her application for disability. It’s been slowly grinding its way through the system for 2+ years. They don’t have enough staff as it is to process applications promptly.
I’ll be 78 this month. I can’t retire until she gets the benefits because my company keeps her on the medical plan. Every couple of years she needs a month or so in a behavioral facility to get her meds straightened out again. A month at retail rate is a good part of $100K.
@19 raven
An ex-supervisor voted for Dump three times because the democrats would raise his taxes. I haven’t spoken to him in years. A mutual friend talks to him every month or so. He basically says they are in denial when he asks if this is what they voted for.
One assumes that shutting down NOAA will also switch off USA data feed to the World Meteorological Organisation. With no data to nudge the other global models (Met Office, ECMWF etc) the forecast over USA will be less accurate. But more that, there is the quid pro quo implicit in WMO’s ethos:
implies “no data? No forecast…” Try running an airport without professional forecast and relying on the windy.com website…
Aaaand here it begins, the suicide phase. One does wonder what will be left of the US in a couple of years.
Regarding NOAA: hurricane season starts on June 1. Good luck.
Regarding social security: I read enough interviews of US citizens, mostly seniors, depending on SocSec for vital therapy such as dialysis. If they bollix that up, the US population is going to diminish rapidly. Maybe was the plan all along?
Sorry, “maybe that was the plan all along?”
I may be wrong, but I think having accurate weather reports is kinda important when SpaceX wants to launch a rocket.
You all do remember that Drumpf does weather, too, including hurricane tracking.
There’s the Euro model and UKMET. But I imagine both need to plug data in they receive from US Gov’t funded sources. Then there’s the GFS, which does weird stuff beyond 7 days sometimes (which is a great source of humor on the weather nerd boards), but is doing ok with 5 days and less. Is the GFS on the chopping block?
And what hurricane models are US funded? I learned to use those better last season but cannot recall their names off the top of my head.
Without adequate weather forecasting, La. is up the proverbial creek without a paddle, plus a big leak in the small boat in a river full of starving crocodiles. While hurricanes are the biggest weather threat, heavy rains and tornadoes are not much less dangerous. Early in the 20th century, an unpredicted hurricane hit southwest La., which is very low ground with lots of marshes. There is still no accurate death toll, although it was certainly in the 100s.
Baton Rouge, where I live, is partly on high ground, but a good bit is reclaimed marsh or lowlands that were flood plains for the Mississippi before levies. In 2016, an epic rainstorm hit and much of the area was flooded. Just today we had alerts on possible winds so strong that New Orleans cut out a lot of Mardi Gras festivities today. Also had a tornado alert, which was on TVs. Imagine sitting in a vulnerable spot and not knowing that a cyclone might be heading toward you.
Mississippi is not much less vulnerable than La. Tornadoes devastated an area near Jackson in 1975 or 1976 (don’t remember date for certain). Elvis put on 3 concerts in Jackson to raise money for the victims; first time he’d performed in Miss. for many years. And imagine living in Fla. with no accurate hurricane info.
These are very red, pro-Trump, MAGA states. Still, there are lots of good people here also. I have no doubt private weather services will pop up, but unless you’re wealthy, you’ll be sitting in the middle of a hurricane flood while the rich people will be far away drinking martinis and watching news reports of the deaths and devastation in unprepared places.
Checked Tropical Tidbits: HWRF, HMON, HAFS-A and B.
For the globals UKMET is hard to get info on for looming storms. Commenters post output on Eye on the Storm, but it’s not readily accessible like the GFS and Euro. Last year I learned the trick to get good output on the GFS and Euro based ensembles. Gives a better feel for uncertainty of tracks.
wsierichs @28
Tornadoes aren’t things you can pinpoint several days out and prepare or evacuate. The NOAA/NWS Storm Prediction Center has good graphics for the coming 3 days or so for general regions where conditions may be ripe for tornadoes. But not a granular prediction. Usually day of event they put out mesocale discussions for higher threat areas concerning supercells, tornadoes, squall lines, and hail cores. Looks like shit’s happening across Mississippi and Alabama today/now and tomorrow the coastal Carolinas and Virginia will get pretty intense.
https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/outlook/day2otlk.html
https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/outlook/day2otlk_1730.gif
The link may change tomorrow.
Tropical cyclone modeling gives better assumptions for people wanting to get out of harm’s way, but storms wobble off track at the 11th hour and Katrina showed how devastating flooding can be.
We can still predict the weather where I live; gonna be a tad weathery in the next few days, with Cyclone Alfred on its way.
Anyway. If the philosophy is to run health care for profit, and to run prisons for profit, then running weather services for profit kinda fits. After all, public utilities don’t actually run at a profit, do they?
Much better to run them at a profit!
Nothing without a profit seems to be a goal. And if they can maneuver themselves into being the one that profits they do. That’s an end point of the taxation as theft feeling.
Government is not about profit when it comes to organizing anything collectively, someone has to pay for it. What they replace it with will be a government also. One they want to work profit into and I refuse to accept rule by the rich and corporations.
I’ve got ideas about rhetoric that is ok with income paying what you need, and shames profit until we all make income. I still wish shareholder was a pejorative.
The private weather services get all of their data from…NOAA, the Federal government. The NWS gives it away for free. Who do you think builds the weather satellites, launches them, and collects the data?
The National Weather Service is part of NOAA.
We taxpayers spend $5 a year on NOAA, 1 and 1/2 12 ounce cups of coffee.
It’s worth it.
I worked in that building (NOAA Center for Weather and Climate Prediction, aka NCWCP or “nick-whip”) for many years until retiring in 2020. Several of my friends and colleagues there were summarily fired last week. This is a personal disaster as well as a national disaster. And why, just to break stuff, that’s all they’re good at.
My city is due to be hit with a cyclone tomorrow. The clouds only came over this morning and it doesnt look like anything is happening out there. We had a first warning last Sunday. Has given lots of time to prepare. Even with this there is probably going to be lives lost and lots of damage. Wihtout this warning it could only be worse.
Here’s a pretty good video from a pretty good channel:
Paul Krugman the Nobel prize winning economist, had something to say today about Trump and Musk wrecking the Federal government.
His point is that important things are going to start breaking. It could be wild fires as they fired a lot of the Forest Service fire fighting people. Air traffic control. Weather forecasting.
Medical care.
He thinks it might be Social Security, which was part of this thread above. This really is going to be a disaster.
40% of retired people depend only on Social Security for their lives. It’s not much.
I know some of them.
They live from Social Security check to Social Security check. A missing month or two will be a disaster for them.
The title is a metaphor.
Tesla doors open electronically.
The manual override is hard to find and use.
When a Tesla catches fire, not too unusual, people end up trapped in them and…burn to death.
This is a metaphor.
Guess who is the burning Tesla and guess who is trapped in it.
https://www.theverge.com/news/622990/trump-doge-government-layoffs-doge-weather-forecasts-noaa
The Verge points out that this is straight out of Project 2025
Who needs weather models and supercomputer algorithms when you have the opinions and reckonings of salt-of-the-earth Americans?
And who needs weather models and supercomputer algorithms when moms always know best what clothes their kids should wear?
NOAA can be replaced by a Sharpie, clearly.