Join me in an experiment. Let's see how quickly you can get the weather forecast for your area right now. Use any tool you like. Use your computer. Use your phone. If you really want to be old-school, you could turn on your TV or even take a glance at a dead tree you have sitting around for some reason.
I'm guess it's not going to take very long. Between the Weather Channel, WeatherNation and every local yokel television station in America - along with methods of delivery too numerous to count and at everyone's fingertips 24/7 - it is almost impossible not to know the weather. So if we don't have many government meteorologists as we used to, is that actually a problem?
NBC seems to think so:
With tornado season underway the National Weather Service is short nearly 200 meteorologists, including vacancies in Tornado Alley and at the office responsible for predicting tornadoes, according to documents obtained by NBC News.
NBC owned and operated station KXAS in Dallas/Ft. Worth has acquired union documents showing as many as 500 vacancies at NWS offices around the country, including nearly 200 unfilled jobs for front-line meteorologists.
Many of the offices affected are in the central and southern states most often hit by tornadoes, and there are three vacant forecasting positions at the National Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., which is responsible for tracking long-range tornado threats across the country.
“We’re basically staffed at the minimum level to cover shifts,” said Jeremy Grams, a forecaster at the National Storm Prediction Center.
“I just hope something really bad doesn’t happen,” said Dan Sobien, president of the National Weather Service Employees Organization, the union that represents NWS forecasters.
The National Weather Service is funded by Congress as part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The automatic federal spending cuts required by "sequestration" chopped 8.2 percent from the NWS budget in early 2013, and NOAA's acting administrator ordered a hiring freeze. The NWS hiring freeze lasted until this January.
Now anyone who is a meteorologist, feel free to fill in my knowledge gaps here, but I'm just asking these questions from common sense:
Why does the quantity of meteorologists on hand matter when it comes to how well you can "predict" a tornado? Can't one qualified meteorolgist recognize the conditions for it?
Since when can you predict tornadoes anyway? You can issue a watch saying one is possible, but you can't really say if one is going to form or not, can you?
What exactly is the value of "predicting" a tornado? Unless you can tell people where it is and where it's headed, all you can tell them is to note the conditions, be prepared and be ready to take cover. Most people who live in Tornado Alley can surely recognize the conditions on their own, can't they?
Are there really tornadoes touching down and wreaking havoc that the NWS doesn't know about because it's short-staffed? I'm seriously asking. It seems far-fetched to me but I want to know.
I understand that issuing the watches and warnings is the job of NWS and the private weather sources don't step in and do that if the NWS misses one for some reason. But there are no shortage of sources to tell you if it's stormy, and surely most people know how to recognize the potential risks of conditions they can clearly observe, right?
Is this like when liberals scream that PBS has to be saved so we don't lose "quality television," while completely ignoring that there are 18 kajillion channels out there that aren't funded by the government, and surely there is enough quality out there that everyone should be able to find something they like? Or is this really a problem?
By the way, want to hear my idea for a Twister sequel? They all go to Disney World to celebrate their accomplishments, and while they're there, an unlikely outbreak of tornadoes attacks Orlando, forcing the gang into action to keep people from being swept away on rides like Space Mountain and the flying elephants. The title? Twister II: Flying Dumbo.
