Is Weather Woke?

Well, here we are again at the start of another hurricane season. While we’re still a few months from the expected peak of activity, it’s clear from our recent run of predictable afternoon thunderstorms that we’ve now moved fully into summer and the rainy season and all that it brings here in Southwest Florida. 

While I don’t like hurricanes, per se, or all their destructive outcomes, I have to admit being one of those weather geeks who are nonetheless fascinated by them, particularly living here in Marco. I think a large part of that fascination, for me at least, comes from the level of forecasting knowledge and expertise our local meteorologists demonstrate each hurricane season. When out-of-town friends invariably reach out with frantic texts in the lead-up to a hurricane, I always reassure them that our meteorologists are the absolute best at their profession and possess a lot better read on the likely local impacts than the national media sensationalizing the possible crisis. 

We get the information we need to stay safe. 

I’m hoping that’s still the case. 

In early June, John Morales, chief meteorologist for NBC6 in Miami and the longest-tenured broadcast meteorologist in South Florida, used the time slots for each of his daily weather forecasts to send a longer-term message than whetheror not rain might impact upcoming Father’s Day cookouts. 

His segment started with a broadcast from six years ago using a visual all of us in South Florida are familiar with: an animated map of the Florida peninsula showing the path of a significant hurricane about to make landfall along our coast, in this case, the east coast, where Morales is based.  

“There’s a lot of anxiety out there, because you don’t see it turning, right?” he said, referring to Hurricane Dorian in his 2019 segment. “It’s going to turn. The turn will come Monday evening, into Tuesday,” reassuring his viewers that they’d be spareda direct hit from one of the most powerful hurricanes ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean.  

His prediction was right. 

Morales, back in the present, then told today’s viewers, “As you’ve grown accustomed to my presentations over my 34 years in South Florida newscasts, confidently I went on TV and told you it’s going to turn. You don’t need to worry. It’s going to turn. And I am here today to tell you I’m not sure I can do that this year, because of the cuts, the gutting, the sledgehammer attack on science in general.” 

Morales went on to talk about the federal government’s cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA). He noted that NWS offices in Central and South Florida are now 20 to 40 percent understaffed heading into the hurricane season, with a nearly 20% reduction in weather balloon releases, all of which Morales says could impact meteorologists’ ability to accurately predict storms in what’spredicted to be an historic hurricane season. 

Morales’ claims are backed up by similar reports across the country. In early June, CBS News ran a lengthy story examining the federal cuts to NWS and NOAA and found that around 1,000 NOAA workers have left through firings or buyouts, more than half of those at NWS. The story notes that nearly 40 of the country’s 122 forecasting offices are missing specialists in key roles, some in critical hurricane-prone markets like Miami, Florida,Mobile, Alabama, and Lake Charles, Louisiana. Tampa, Lake Charles, and Houston were all missing the key role of meteorologist-in-charge at the time of that story’s publication. 

Morales ended his broadcast a couple weeks ago by saying, “I was asked to talk about this today. I’m glad I was. I just want you to know that what you need to do is call your representatives and make sure that these cuts are stopped.”  

His phrasing was a not-so-subtle signal to Morales’ viewers that this wasn’t just his rogue opinion, but rather a sanctioned message from his management, a public service announcement with a specific call to action. His broadcast went viral. 

It would be easy, I suppose, to default to the notion that of course, a network media outlet is going to raise the red flag about budget cuts the Trump Administration has made. That’s what they do.  

There are also many on the right who view NOAA’s efforts to monitor climate change as part of the “woke” agenda that needs to be reined in. 

Both can be true. But so is the notion that weather isn’t the climate. 

Weather isn’t “woke.” It’s just weather.It’swhat's happening outside your window in the next few days, not how we’ve gotten here over the past 50 years. 

Regardless of what caused that potential hurricane to blow up into a category five faster than any in history, please just tell me if it’s going to hit our community, when, and with what strength winds and what height storm surge.  

The rest we can argue about later. 

On June 26, Morales posted an update to the NBC6 website saying that NOAA just announced that on Monday, June 30, meteorologists “should expect all data from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager Sounder (SSMIS) to be terminated” and that the “service change and termination will be permanent.” 

That’s nerdspeak for saying that the way NOAA and the National Hurricane Center use microwave technology to peer under clouds and at night to track hurricanes and their rapid development has been reduced by 50%, according to Morales. It’s a critical issue, given that two-thirds of Atlantic basin storms are out of reach of reconnaissance aircraft.  

“Combine the dropping of half of the microwave scans of tropical storms with the loss of data from missing weather balloon launches brought on by cuts to NOAA and the National Weather Service, plus the risk of aircraft breakdowns and/or mission cancellation because of lack of trained technicians, and we’re back to tracking hurricanes like it’s 1999,” he said. “Except this isn’t a party. And people could die.”