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Budget Cuts Could Force Temporary Closure of Weather Service Offices

By Tim Lankford

Story Created: Feb 22, 2011 at 7:06 PM MDT

Story Updated: Feb 25, 2011 at 8:27 AM MDT

It's been a snowy winter in Montana and elsewhere, but as winter turns to spring the most active weather season in the U.S. looms as do budget cuts to the National Weather Service. Dan Sobien, president of the National Weather Service Employees Organization says the continuing resolution that was voted on, "and approved by the House of Representatives, essentially is about a 30% cut in the amount of money available."

Sobien says the cuts would affect every aspect of the agency's mission, from day to day forecasting to alerting the public about severe weather, wildfires and flooding, "The ideas of closing offices for 27 days at a time and rotating that around the country...that only accounts for about half of what they need to cut. I have no idea how they are going to get the rest of this."

It would even affect how weather is provided to those of us bringing the weather to you. The computer models of the atmosphere, used in our newscasts, are made using data collected by the Weather Service office on Gore Hill. That's because one of the cuts being considering is reducing the number of weather balloon launches, which currently happen twice a day. Sobien says that would result in less accurate data for commerce, agriculture and aviation, "If you're not putting good information into it," he says, "you're going to get bad information out. It's going to set back weather forecasting decades."

Congressman Denny Rehberg released the following statement on the proposed budget cuts: I know i speak for all Montanans when i say that we appreciate the hard work our meteorologists do every day. Unfortunately, many of us warned that reckless deficits would have painful consequences - and that it would hurt funding for good programs that help people. But the clarion call to stop over-spending is too important to ignore. In fact, we cannot ignore it."

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