I am republishing this story because the Trump Admn wants to slash the budgets for NOAA and Servere Storms Lab. So I want other Americans to be reminded of what we will lose if this happens.
Lets start with some caveats here. I am not an meteorologist, or any other kind of professional weather expert. Just an old lady who has lived in Tornado alley most of her life, with a dash of military watch experience to boot. I wrote this diary back in late Feb/early march, and it has sat in my draft box this entire time. So consider this a cautionary tale about any kind of attempt to sequester, privatize or defund NOAA or NWS. Now that some of you have followed closely what happened in Oklahoma only about 2 weeks ago, with our hellacious and deadly tornado outbreak, read this diary, with that in mind. And FYI--the GOP is blocking the School Shelter Plan in Oklahoma The party of NO strikes again, grinching little kid's storm shelters at public schools in Tornado alley. So here is where the older part of the diary begins. So what brings this up? Well much like the famous Jindal gaffe, noises have been made that the National Weather Service might suffer cuts due to the Republican Induced Sequestration. Some folks have gone to great lengths to say that furloughs may be where staff works a four day week for some time, to cut back on budget strain, because those of us who do not know how that works, worried that we might loose the whole service for a period of time. And since Sequestration starts in April--for those who live in Tornado alley, the thought of any sort of cut that could affect our services from the NWS is particularly troubling. Follow me through the orange portal if you want to understand the importance of NOAA and NWS to a civilian who lives in Tornado Alley.
I want you to imagine that it is the 1970s somewhere in Tornado Alley. That could be anywhere from the Texas Panhandle, to Oklahoma, to central Kansas. And it's spring, between March and May, which are generally the most volatile months for tornadic weather throughout a normal year. [Normal is a relative term in these parts]. In the 70s, I lived in the Metro area of OKC. In Oklahoma, our local, premier weatherman is Gary England. A spry man with brown hair and a voice that is indelibly burned into memories of many Okies, for as long as some can remember. Gary England is an institution in this state. I won't pretend to know or care about his politics, but I can tell you that he is a man who really cares about the people here, and has spent many an all-nighter talking Okies through some of the worst severe weather imaginable, the way an Air Traffic Controller would talk a civilian down, landing an un-piloted jumbo jet. Gary England served as the end all and be all before we had all the awesome gadgets and toys, all the software and scientific discoveries that help us predict and monitor severe weather down to the city street and house. Here is a video of Gary and a chopper pilot observing Tornadoes, just last year:YouTube Video What I am talking about here, was the bad old days--back in the 70s and before. The old days when people often received NO warning whatsoever for impending severe storms. Our understanding of severe weather, and the technology we have to predict it and track it has come a long way. Back then you knew a tornado was coming because you saw it hit your neighbor's house. Warning times were 5-0 minutes. People outside of this region, who rarely have to deal with tornadoes and other severe thunderstorms, don't always understand how quickly they can spin up. I guess in some ways it's like weather on the seas. It really is that volatile and quick, and capable of being just as deadly. Imagine if you will, going on an outing with your family, on a beautiful day with an amazing blue sky. Perhaps its a bit warmer than usual, and a bit humid, but otherwise it's an electric blue day full of brilliant spring flowers and grasses. The perfect day to go fishing, or hiking, camping etc., You look up in that sky, and there is not a care in the world, maybe an occasional fluffy white cloud or two, but nothing to dull the moment or truly block the light. What you don't know is that perhaps a couple hours south of you, storms are brewing. The warmth and moisture you feel is higher down there. The winds are coming in off of the Rockies, jetstream is looping down over your area, and as the atmosphere heats up, if you had a birds eye view, or perhaps a satellite view, the areas to the south of you look like popcorn popping, with big white towers building on that moisture and heat, as the wind starts to carry them in your general direction. In the 1970s, that information would never reach you. Back then we were only starting to understand that storms tend to follow tracks. That you can reasonably predict the path it will take with knowledge of wind direction, depending on what county a storm is coming from. So we might know that there is severe weather in Paul's Valley, or Fort Sil, but back then we hadn't made the connection that those storms will follow specific, predictable paths. Everything we knew then, that information was gathered either in the moment or after the fact. It seems like a such a simple thing, but we needed years of observation and study and record keeping to realize this before it could be shared as a fact with the general population. Back then the information seemed more disjointed. Even though individual storms will hit multiple areas, it felt like when a storm hit a town, it was not connected in anyway to the other towns that storm might have hit, if those places were not in line of sight. Back then, we didn't have the kind of radar we have now. We had extra grainy, low resolution satellite photos, often in black and white. And even after the radar and the television came in color--many people still had black and white television sets. Back then, some of the structures found in a column of air, or in a storm or a low pressure system were not fully understood. So these are things that played against forecasters in terms of short and long term forecasting. Back then we didn't have an internet, or cell phones [much less smart phones] as we know them, with apps you can download to read these high resolution, color enhanced radar pictures of the weather on either a national or local scale. We had three channels plus PBS and landlines, and that was it. Seeing the satellite feeds of all the weather from the National Weather Service was expensive because the only technology that existed to share this information was expensive. You needed a television or radio station to do that, because there was nothing else that could provide real-time information, nothing like what we have now. ALL of your information about the weather came from one of three sources: Your own eyes, a NOAA Weather Radio, or the Television. If the information you needed wasn't available through one of these means, then you were shit out of luck, and in tornado season that equates to a sitting duck, on bad days. Without the internet, the NWS might as well have been Houston Control or Area 51. It wasn't kept top secret, but it might as well have been, because it was inaccessible for people with no radio or television reception. What this meant to the average person in Tornado Alley? It meant running for cover because it would start hailing. What do you do when you are without a structure to take cover under? Hail stones hurt when they hit you. Do you take the abuse and go run under a tree [otherwise known as a lightning rod]? It meant the possibility of going camping and having your tent implode due to very high winds. Some of those thunderstorms, even without a tornado, generate 70 to 90 MPH winds. It meant the possibility of being blown off the road in a car or while on a motorcycle-- It meant the possibility of Walking or driving right into the gaping maw of death, because there was no 3 day warning that conditions would be just right to spawn a tornado, much less a tornado outbreak. You see in the bad old days, when we would have these tornado outbreaks, all we learned from them came after the fact. And until our technology really took a leap forward, we still didn't know enough for a long while, to make these predictions. Many people take this for granted now. Here is an example from a Kos Diary, The Weather Dude. Another example from The Weather Dude. A map as simple as the ones displayed on the Weather Dude's diary, means that Meteorologists have managed to predict potential hazardous weather using advanced software models, that calculate probable tracking and potential developments, based on current and [recent] past meteorological events. This isn't cheap. Our tax dollars are well spent on these technologies and research, and not just for Tornado Alley, but for areas prone to Hurricanes, and dangerous Fire Weather, and flooding. We can now warn entire states, communities, regions even, days in advance, of developing severe weather. That is a far cry from 13 minutes. We now can warn communities 40 minutes or more ahead, of supercell thunderstorms, rotating thunderstorms, and tornadic thunderstorms, because with this technology, we now understand tracking and training of storms. These meticulous records are important for the study of climate change [now there's a red flag for the GOP] but also for farmers and ranchers, And the military, and your local public school, or softball or baseball league. Did you know that when you are in a Military, Command Duty Office, that there are usually televisions sets tuned to weather, along with quick links on computers to take watch standers to local weather prediction and warning pages? The military doesn't want to deal with hail damage to their gear any more than you do. Nor do they want their expensive planes or other equipment blown all over the flight line. And just like you and I, they like to know whether or not it's time to take cover if a tornado is on it's way. We take it for granted that these tools will always be there for us, and that these people will always be there for us, but if we refuse to invest in these technologies and the people qualified to use them and develop those technologies, then no. These advancements will not always be there fore us. As old gear fails, it is even possible to go backwards. And right now, it feels like these services are free because it is our tax dollars that fund these institutions like the NWS, NOAA, and the USGS, but it's not. It's just that because these are publicly funded, the data and the tools are made available to all citizens, which is quite a departure from the corporatized nightmare some politicians would like to force on us [like R. Santorum]. Imagine if your pilot or teacher, or you had to go PPV to access radar, instead of it being available to the public? What if these private industries did like the cable companies and offered different package of services, you know, prime for the highest price, and some crappy "basic" service for the lowest price? I can go back to the bad old days and I would probably be okay. Even though I am not an expert or a meteorologist, I do know what trouble looks like. I know wall clouds from shelf clouds, and scud clouds. I know what a popped cap is, I know what criss-crossing clouds in a low, warm moist ceiling mean. But for most people? Good luck with that. They don't have the time or inclination, and are completely dependent upon tax-payer funded, weather prediction. To me, this is just more GOP attempts to tear out the heart of the American infrastructure, while repeating the same old bullshit about "Government Not Working," while they do everything they can to make it NOT WORK. It's tired and trite and whenever they are involved, almost entirely contrived to serve their own screwed up agenda. They want us to pay a private company for this service. They give our tax dollars to churches [Faith Based Initiatives] while cutting important scientific programs that contribute to public safety, so their cronies can line their pockets. And this kills several birds with one stone. It's another method to control the Climate Change conversation, because if the science is privatized, then the conclusions will reflect corporate policy, rather than unmitigated scientific conclusions, think of all the stories released about our changing climate from NOAA records! How inconvenient, guess it's time to do to NWS and NOAA what they have been doing to Planned Parenthood. If at first you cannot succeed, bottleneck the information and the funding! Many of the red states lie in Tornado Alley, and in Hurricane prone areas. I would be sure and rub this in a GOPer's face whenever possible. Because severe weather isn't picky. It takes out homes, schools, churches, vehicles--without regard to one's politics, gender, race, religion or sexual orientation. Even if the NWS only suffers 4 day work weeks, on a reduced staff, it is still a bad deal. Weather doesn't stop just because your work day is over or it's time to go to bed. Weather is a 24-7, 365 days a year issue that has to be monitored constantly. And that monitoring should be done by qualified personnel. You don't want your stations staffed by some fly by night temp agency. And all that gear, all the RADAR, the Storm chasing fleets, all the computers, all the screens, the aircraft, and interface requires maintenance. But with a skeleton crew in the middle of Tornado Season? Yea, that's going to end well. This shit doesn't magically maintain itself, it takes a coordinated effort by highly trained personnel to make all of these elements come together to give us state of the art severe weather tracking and prediction. And now that we have a more unstable atmosphere thanks to Global Climate Change [and 20 years of well funded denial lobbyists], their jobs just got a lot harder. So by all means, cut the staff, and put off those upgrades because, clearly we don't need that stuff. In fact, I propose we waste all our money trying to defund Planned Parenthood instead [snark]. With this and other programs, you really will get what you pay for.
In 1948, March the 25th the first tornado was correctly predicted. Air force Captain Robert C. Miller and Major Ernest J. Fawbush found the atmosphere ripe for tornadoes in the vicinity of Tinker. Thanks to their forecast nobody was hurt when the tornado struck a few hours later. ThinkQuest
According to the CNN story, tornado prediction was the exclusive territory of the military until 1953. Tinker refers to an Air force base in the OKC Metro Area. It is still there, and was hit again, by the May 3rd Tornado in 1999, the same monster tornado that devastated Moore, Oklahoma.
In 1953, the U.S. Weather Bureau established the Severe Local Storms Center, known as SELS. The first tornado watches issued by SELS usually covered an average area of 27,000 square miles. Today, tornado and severe thunderstorm watches average 25,000 square miles. CNN
A Watch means conditions are right for an event. A Warning means that a hazardous weather event in imminent. Watch means be aware, Warning means take cover.
In 1966, SELS was renamed the National Severe Storms Forecast Center. At this time, tornado and severe thunderstorm forecasts were renamed "watches" to correspond with products issued by the National Hurricane Center. Ibid
1973 NSSL engineers create a contoured black and white display, a vast improvement from the grid of numbers currently in use. Severe Storms Lab History
On May 24, an NSSL team intercepts a storm being scanned by the NSSL Doppler radar. The team documents the entire life cycle of the tornado on film. Researchers are able to compare the film images with Doppler radar data and discover a pattern that meant the tornado was forming before it appeared on film. They name this pattern the Tornado Vortex Signature (TVS). This important discovery eventually led to NOAA to deploying a nationwide network of Doppler radars. Severe Storms Lab History.
Think about it now in 2013--After May Third 1999, the term Hook Echo became a household word, at least in Tornado Alley. That is the signature of a severe storm capable or that is producing a tornado or that is rotating. In 1973, the Severe Storms Lab would also introduce the use of duel doppler radar monitoring of storms. giving them different perspectives of the same storm simultaneously, to help them understand structures that produced or lead to Tornadoes and other severe weather events.
In 1988, the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Norman, Oklahoma, began the first operational test of Doppler weather radar called the WSR-88D. EMSA
It was in the late 1980s that the National Weather Service, in a tri-agency effort with the U. S. Departments of Defense and Transportation, developed a network of new doppler weather radars (the WSR88D) across the United States.UTexas EDU
See also StormTrack.com See also BBC Science and Nature: The Hunt for the Super Twister. In the early 1990s, NEXRAD was developed. The next generation of doppler radar. "After the deployment of Doppler weather radar, lead times for tornadoes were nearly doubled, from less than five minutes to around 10 to 13 minutes. cnn." NEXRAD was installed at NWS offices nationwide which gave us tracking abilities we had never benefited from before. Instead of isolated, individual meteorologists telephoning their peers in other communities, the 1990s brought us a more organic wholistic approach to weather prediction and public safety, because now we had a grid of real time information flowing into a community that was interconnected and capable of sharing information in the moment. It meant the difference between communicating with smoke signals vs an internet. 13 minutes is more than some people realize. you have more of a chance with that, than say 5 minutes or no-minutes to seek some kind of meaningful shelter.
NSSL participates in the Cooperative Oklahoma Profiler Studies of 1991 (COPS-91) and uses instrumented aircraft and a ground-based network of instruments to sample tornadic supercells. Severe Storms Lab History
In Oklahoma, we have helicopter pilots that now shadow storms, basically airborne storm chasers who help meteorologists on the ground have a real time view of the storm from higher altitudes. They can often see the funnels even in the dark, because they can fly above the area where the storm blocks out the light, even in the fading sun. They are also great at reporting damage paths that help first responders get to the areas needed in the immediate wake of a storm. This is an interview of Mason Dunn by CNN, over his job as a helicopter pilot for the Channel 9 news station, which is where Gary England does his "magic" for the viewing audience.YouTube Video
1994: NSSL partners with the University of Oklahoma to develop the first mobile Doppler radar. Severe Storms Lab History.
It is not unusual to see all sorts of tricked out vehicles with meteorological gadgets attached to their roofs. Some pulling trailers with radomes on them.
In October 1995, the National Severe Storms Forecast Center was renamed the Storm Prediction Center, and as part of the weather service's modernization program, the Storm Prediction Center was moved to Norman, Oklahoma.cnn
Meteorologist Mark Wurman intercepts a tornadic storm for the first time after dark, and measures the fastest known windspeed inside the funnel. 318 MPH give or take 10 MPH. It is the May 3rd Tornado outbreak that devastated Central Oklahoma in 1999...Winds that powerful can rip pavement from roads, grass from the ground and freight cars from train tracks. USAToday.
Tornadoes after dark are particularly deadly. Often accompanied by power outages, the only way to see one with the naked eye, is to do so when lightning or exploding transformers are blowing up and illuminating the funnel on the horizon. The dark clouds and low ceiling with no sunshine makes for terrifying consequences. You literally cannot see what is coming and the noise from the torrential rain, howling winds, and hail is deafening, so that you might not hear the tornado either, until it's too late and you realize that it's the wrong time for a train to pass, or that you live no where near the tracks at all. Here is a very simple page about why Radar is so useful for predicting and monitoring weather.
2001: An NSSL scientist develops the Hazardous Weather Pager Program that sends lifesaving weather messages via pagers to subscribers with hearing disabilities. Severe Storms Lab History.
Before there were smart phones and apps, there were pagers!
2004: NSSL seamlessly mosaics all 130 NWS and Department of Defense weather radars across the U.S. to provide the first high-resolution depiction of storms and quantitative precipitation estimation products from coast-to-coast in real-time. Severe Storms Lab History.
Now we can follow these systems from start to finish in one uninterrupted view. It is something we take for granted now, but we shouldn't. This is a long way from 1953 on an Air Force Base in what used to be the middle of nowhere.
2005: NSSL SMART-R team operates the mobile radar in California to help forecast debris flows in areas burned by wild fires. Severe Storms Lab History.
I know we imagine that NOAA is all about weather. But it tracks fire weather, and fires as well. Knowing where debris flows are going means that we can tell fire fighters where to anticipate the next outbreak, and which home owners need to evacuate. In 2006, this technology will also be applied to flooding events as well. Lives saved, property saved, new understanding what needs to be insured and why. How much money has NOAA saved the US? Probably a lot more than what we spend on their operation. There is a lot more on the Severe Storms Lab History Page--I highly recommend it for interested parties. Because I couldn't list everything--otherwise this would be three diaries long. 2011: CSU Professor Helps Improve Tornado Prediction This research, the education of the people involved, the gear etc., are not free. That's why its so important to see that our Scientists get the funding they need to undertake these very important studies. Now, meteorologists can warn us of potential tornadoes, because the radar is able to detect circulation within a storm, even the funnel has not fully formed or even touched the ground. This is a long way from having to exclusively rely on spotters to confirm hazardous weather events. Just because the funnel hasn't fully formed or touched ground yet, doesn't mean it's not dangerous. It simply means that as the storm travels, that funnel could drop down and do damage. It's better to take precautions, than it is to be surprised by a tornado. Without all the state of the art equipment available, and the trained scientists and personnel to interpret these signals, we would be up a creek when tornado season hits. It's still not 100 percent accurate all the time, because like landing a plane on an aircraft carrier, there are lots of moving parts coming together, but the meteorologists have done an outstanding job of tracking conditions that can produce these deadly weather events. So that people on the ground have enough of a warning, that they can take cover, even if circulation is only indicated in the clouds, and not on the ground. At least we have a choice in most cases. The following video shows David Payne on Channel 4 from May 3rd 1999. Jim Gardener is in a helicopter shadowing this storm.YouTube Video Occasionally the storms sometimes hit the televisions stations:YouTube Video I know you are thinking that these news stations are private for profit entities. But the fact is, that they provide a free public service, because they are able to access NOAA and NWS data and feeds free. The stations pay for gear, like computers and phones to receive this data, but the collection and collation of that data is free. That means the work of thousands of government employees, research, collection, collation, correlation, cross references, and records keeping [think archives] are all available for free. We pay taxes to keep that up, and these news forecasters are able to stand on the shoulders of these government entities to bring us state of the art storm prediction. I have to put this out there, before someone tries to make it sound as if these news channels do it all without any help at all. Because that would not be true. They obviously contribute, but contribution is a far cry from sole authorship. Without tax payer funded institutions for them to draw upon, these stations would have to charge, because that would be the only way for them to afford all of the foundational data provided by the government at Tax Payer's expense. How would that affect coverage? How would that affect the quality of storm prediction? How long before it's like police service. The unspoken knowledge that economically advantaged areas get more coverage than the disadvantaged. That's how it works with roads, and schools too. Tax payer funding is supposed to equalize access to community resources. It doesn't always succeed, but it gets us within the ballpark most of the time. So far with weather prediction, we have been able to achieve that. If we allow budget cuts and defunding though, I don't believe that will last. Your ability to see what is coming could go back 20 or 30 years if you don't have the resources to pay for the access. Quality of coverage and record keeping could go down, because of budget cuts, meant to fulfill an anti-government agenda, and also silence climate change related research as it relates to local weather events. The government cannot work, if you people it with partisan jerks who refuse to do their jobs or be adults. The government cannot work if you refuse to fund it. They government cannot work, if you turn every agency into a paper tiger, and people it with revolving door parasites who warm a seat, in the hopes of landing a sweet corporate job in the field of their regulatory powers. The government cannot function continuously on shoestring budgets and skeleton crews. And we cannot offer state of the art services on aging, broken technologies that are not properly maintained and upgraded on a regular schedule. We save money because we know to pull our cars under cover to save them from hail storms, we know to anchor our yard decor down, to keep it from being blown away, or to stow it if possible. We know to bring pets inside, to collect stray children, and to perhaps put traveling to town off for a while, until the storms pass, and that way we won't be driving right into a rotating wall cloud. We save money because we know when to take shelter underground. And we get all of this, for a bit of tax money. It's a bargain. We would be fools to give this up and allow it to be privatized. Thank you Weather Dude for having diaries with those images linked to, earlier in this diary, and thank you for discussion the potential sequestration fall out for NOAA and NWS. That is important stuff that could affect us all. And thank you to all the meteorologists, storm chasers, to the National Weather Service, NOAA, and all the techs, and programmers involved in making all of this work. You have all personally saved me and my family countless times.