A ballooning problem: Weather warnings face rising risks from budget cuts
Source: Politico
07/06/2026 11:42 AM EDT
Early in the evening of April 13, the skies over central Kansas darkened as a sudden severe storm developed, hurling baseball-sized hail across three counties and producing two tornadoes.
That type of extreme weather is common across the Great Plains, but what was unusual was that the forecast from the regional storm center had predicted clear skies. The problem, according to local emergency managers: the lack of critical data due to cuts to weather monitoring by the Trump administration.
At issue, meteorologists say, are spending reductions imposed under President Donald Trump by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team last year that have thinned the network of weather balloons the National Weather Service launches twice daily — and which provide crucial information for severe weather warnings for communities across the country.
“The issue is the forecast,” Thomas Winter, emergency manager for Franklin County, Kansas, said of the twister that hit his community southwest of Kansas City. “There was a zero percent chance of thunderstorms — and that forecast comes from the storm prediction center out of Oklahoma.”
Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/06/weather-warnings-budget-cuts-00986178
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