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March 24, 2025 |  By: Associated Press

Massive job cuts lead to reduction in vital weather balloon launches

weather balloon

WASHINGTON (AP) — With massive job cuts, the National Weather Service is eliminating or reducing vital weather balloon launches in eight northern locations, which meteorologists and former agency leaders said will degrade the accuracy of forecasts just as severe weather season kicks in. 

The normally twice-daily launches of weather balloons in about one-hundred locations provide information that forecasters and computer models use to figure out what the weather will be and how dangerous it can get, so cutting back is a mistake, said eight different scientists, meteorologists and former top officials at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — the weather service’s parent agency.

A former NOAA chief during the Clinton Administration, D. James Baker says weather balloons give scientists information they can't get any other way. Baker says he had to cut spending in the agency during his tenure but he refused to cut observations such as weather balloons, saying, "It’s an absolutely essential piece of the forecasting system.”

Launches will be eliminated in Omaha, Nebraska and Rapid City, South Dakota, “due to a lack of Weather Forecast Office (WFO) staffing,” the weather service said in a notice issued late last week. It also is cutting from twice daily to once daily launches in Aberdeen, South Dakota; Grand Junction, Colorado; Green Bay, Wisconsin; Gaylord, Michigan; North Platte, Nebraska and Riverton, Wyoming.