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Misc Cold Season Complaining

WolfpackHomer91 said:
So which would you rather live in …. (Contemplating moving, not bc of snow …. But personal reasons)

1. Kingsport /Bristol TN
2. Beckley WV
3. Huntsville AL
4. Oxford MS
5. Harrisonburg VA


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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Harrisonburg. It's a growning town but still pretty small and you're not far away from larger cities. Only 2 hours from DC and Richmond. It's a beautiful area. I thought about moving to Huntsville because I've seen it in the top 5 on the Best Cities to Live. But I visited and wasn't terribly impressed.
 
SimeonNC said:
Cutting a vital service that barely has over a billion dollars in the budget and is already understaffed, a vital service that saves lives and helps prepare against expensive property damage, ect. isn't the answer (by the way, the current admin has a combined net worth literally hundreds of times the entire budget of NOAA/NWS) .
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It's unfathomable that the world-class accountants on here can't seem to grasp this basic cost-benefit analytical point. You could shelve NWS altogether and you would barely move the needle, but apparently that's what some want to see since literal pennys >>> human life.

 
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1300m said:
It's unfathomable that the world-class accountants on here can't seem to grasp this basic cost-benefit analytical point. You could shelve NWS altogether and you would barely move the needle, but apparently that's what some want to see since literal pennys >>> human life.

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You've been in here making some good points over the past couple days.

I'll make another, this is one of the few things the government runs that sees a positive return on what it puts in.

There was never a need to touch this and make weather political.
 
‘It's not just a job to me': Hurricane hunter among NOAA employees laid off in DOGE cuts

Andy Hazelton is one of the DOGE victims. He isn’t the guy you see on television telling you where the hurricane’s going, he’s one of the NWS employees who work on making the forecast models as accurate as they can be. Now he’s gone.

Hazelton was at the National Hurricane Center, working on improving the GFS storm tracking model, when the email came in. He was fired after working more than eight years with NOAA, as a contract employee and recently as a federal staffer, still in his probationary period.

Kerri Englert is featured in a video on the NOAA website. She is, or was, a hurricane hunter, the crew member who gathers data during those daring flights into the eye of the storm, until she got the pink slip yesterday.

www.nbcmiami.com

‘It's not just a job to me': Hurricane hunter among NOAA employees laid off in DOGE cuts

NBC6 spoke to employees of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who were shocked to hear they were laid off because their work is vital for public safety
www.nbcmiami.com www.nbcmiami.com
 
30.2 degrees this morning with my 5' thermometer. 26.7 degrees with my ground level thermometer. RDU is currently at 34. I would bet they will not drop to freezing this morning. Tomorrow morning my official forecasted low is 27. I wonder if RDU will get to freezing. Last year RDU's last freeze was in February, whereas I had freezes until late March. I'm only 12 or so miles away from the airport (as a crow flies).
 
rburrel2 said:
If we're gonna cut the NWS budget... lets start with completely trashing the GFS and all operational costs associated with it. It's basically worthless to even look at now for any forecasting metric.
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That's what I heard Andy Hazelton was working on... That people were talking about up thread. I had said it before all this started though
 
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MichaelJ said:
We are sitting on a time bomb with the current debt and unless some things are done quickly, we will never recover. Kicking the can down the road has gotten us into the situation we are in and it HAS TO BE FIXED. Everybody wants to cut in areas other than their own and that gets us nowhere. Besides most of the Dems in congress (and a lot of Rep too) think a cut is reducing the INCREASE by a point or two, that is not a cut, it is merely a slowing of the growth. The service on the debt will be 1 TRILLION dollars and unless you have a plan to grow the economy by 5-6% over a decade, we will never get our financial house in order. Everybody has got to accept some cuts and pains or we will have no choice soon but to devalue the dollar to help reduce the debt. Are you willing to go there? Because if you are, just know your savings and investments will be cut up to one half.
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There's a sidebar to this discussion that gets into the weeds on generation wealth. It's not a secret Millennials and GenZ will never attain the same standard of living as Boomers/GenX. On a large scale my generation (Millennials) won't even see a wealth transfer from our Boomer parents on average because their assets will be eaten up with end of life care. Dollar devaluation is much less scary a concern when you don't have investments to worry about.

To come back to your point, 86% of the Federal budget is Military, Medicare/Medicaid and debt service. You can fire everyone in the Federal government and immediately save 3% of the budget, then promptly spend twice or three times that amount hiring them all back as contractors. Cutting staff and services isn't the answer because there's a multiplier effect for government spending. The much maligned three-letter agencies enable the broader economy to function with guarantees and security provided by the feds. Without that we'd return to what we were pre-WW1, a backwater and largely destitute nation. "Bigger government" may not be the answer but it can't get much smaller without causing a decline in living standards.

I did not mention social security because it's not an expenditure. It's going to be stressed in the coming 20 years because of the Boomers. "Simply" raising the income cap fixes it in perpetuity to match inflation. Add in a means test if you want and you can double the payout over time. Medicaid isn't going to get cheaper. There are tens of millions left behind economically that need access to medical care. We'd be far better off financially to move to a single payer model. The wealthy can still have their concierge private care as they do now. It would be a boon for business and workers with no more middleman insurance company. For-profit healthcare only survives with government subsidies in rural areas as it is. I have a hard time seeing how healthcare would get measurably worse than I've experience in my 40+ years of dealing with insurance companies. Finally there's no path to reducing government debt without raising taxes. Roughly 1 in 15 Americans are millionaires, heavily weighted towards the upper end of the age bracket as you would expect after a lifetime of earnings and interest. Instead of all that wealth being consumed by medical insurance companies, it can be better served as a pay-it-along to younger generations from the generation that rang up nearly all that debt via tax cuts to themselves and 20 years of war.
 
ChrisAMB said:
There's a sidebar to this discussion that gets into the weeds on generation wealth. It's not a secret Millennials and GenZ will never attain the same standard of living as Boomers/GenX. On a large scale my generation (Millennials) won't even see a wealth transfer from our Boomer parents on average because their assets will be eaten up with end of life care. Dollar devaluation is much less scary a concern when you don't have investments to worry about.

To come back to your point, 86% of the Federal budget is Military, Medicare/Medicaid and debt service. You can fire everyone in the Federal government and immediately save 3% of the budget, then promptly spend twice or three times that amount hiring them all back as contractors. Cutting staff and services isn't the answer because there's a multiplier effect for government spending. The much maligned three-letter agencies enable the broader economy to function with guarantees and security provided by the feds. Without that we'd return to what we were pre-WW1, a backwater and largely destitute nation. "Bigger government" may not be the answer but it can't get much smaller without causing a decline in living standards.

I did not mention social security because it's not an expenditure. It's going to be stressed in the coming 20 years because of the Boomers. "Simply" raising the income cap fixes it in perpetuity to match inflation. Add in a means test if you want and you can double the payout over time. Medicaid isn't going to get cheaper. There are tens of millions left behind economically that need access to medical care. We'd be far better off financially to move to a single payer model. The wealthy can still have their concierge private care as they do now. It would be a boon for business and workers with no more middleman insurance company. For-profit healthcare only survives with government subsidies in rural areas as it is. I have a hard time seeing how healthcare would get measurably worse than I've experience in my 40+ years of dealing with insurance companies. Finally there's no path to reducing government debt without raising taxes. Roughly 1 in 15 Americans are millionaires, heavily weighted towards the upper end of the age bracket as you would expect after a lifetime of earnings and interest. Instead of all that wealth being consumed by medical insurance companies, it can be better served as a pay-it-along to younger generations from the generation that rang up nearly all that debt via tax cuts to themselves and 20 years of war.
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Preach brother preach! This is all for show, they won’t touch the stuff that will actually make a difference.

Raise taxes, bring back the estate tax, we need to reduce inequality and one way to do it is to ensure wealth doesn’t accumulate in the hands of a few. Money is finite!

Make colleges free, invest in better public transportation, invest in single payer healthcare , and rather than pushing for Canada being the 51st state relax rules for travel between the two even further .
 
WolfpackHomer91 said:
So which would you rather live in …. (Contemplating moving, not bc of snow …. But personal reasons)

1. Kingsport /Bristol TN
2. Beckley WV
3. Huntsville AL
4. Oxford MS
5. Harrisonburg VA


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

For snow you definitely choose Beckley. They average like 50”+ of snow, IIRC. Clippers and NWF are killer there. Harrisonburg and some others are probably nicer overall, though. Harrisonburg might be the best balance between snow and “niceness” among those, tbh.
 
ChrisAMB said:
To come back to your point, 86% of the Federal budget is Military, Medicare/Medicaid and debt service.
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This is the big issue. This all feels very performative as these cuts are just trimming a sliver of fat off a bloated pig (not talking about the NOAA here in particular, but the cuts in general). If these cuts were happening alongside huge cuts to defense spending, entitlements, etc. I could understand them more, but as it is unless we’re willing to do something about the military or entitlements there’s really going to be no meaningful cuts that will help to balance the budget.

I do wonder if there’s some savings opportunities at the NWS by consolidating WFOs, but that was already done in the 1990s modernization efforts and we may not be able to consolidate much more there at this point. And even if we could, it would save like 0.01% of the federal budget so it’s fairly meaningless to do.

The Economist ran a good article on how to actually achieve meaningful budget reduction some months back right after the election. Basically, we freeze a lot of spending increases going forward and make some (politically unpopular) changes to entitlements, like gradually raising the Medicare age to 67. rather than slash and burn right now.

www.economist.com

How to make Elon Musk’s budget-slashing dreams come true

We offer some suggestions
www.economist.com www.economist.com

If this is too political, please delete. Just is a bit frustrating of a situation; my fiancée has been affected by the NIH cuts to an extent, too. The fact that they basically started with cutting science funding is concerning to me. I actually do believe we need to do something to bring the deficit under control as it’s scary how much we spend on servicing the interest on the debt alone at this point, I just don’t see how a lot of this is going to do that, especially when it’s paired with potential tax cuts.
 
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rburrel2 said:
If we're gonna cut the NWS budget... lets start with completely trashing the GFS and all operational costs associated with it. It's basically worthless to even look at now for any forecasting metric.
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Agree with this! Weve been "upgrading"or should have been for years and yet its as bad as ever. So maybe some of the folks responsible arent the right people at all.
 
WolfpackHomer91 said:
So which would you rather live in …. (Contemplating moving, not bc of snow …. But personal reasons)

1. Kingsport /Bristol TN
2. Beckley WV
3. Huntsville AL
4. Oxford MS
5. Harrisonburg VA


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Harrisonburg. Easily. Beautiful area. Really nice climate. You get the best of the 4 seasons.
 
JHS said:
The 19th century is coming back in every way I think. No internet, electricity, and automobiles among many things that will be gone in the USA. Right back to 1875.
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Everything gonna be dried up, pal?
 
Snowfan said:
*sighs*
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So this pre-pubescent 19 year old dropout who goes by the online names of "Big Balls" and "Fascist broccoli" get to just chip away at the weather service? When all those rednecks in the trailer park in Missouri that voted for Trump get little warning as the next Joplin MO is coming down on em... they will have Big Balls to thank

1741039553092.png
 
In Oklahoma... FIREDDD! So an unelected billionaire who pays nothing in taxes but gets tons in subsidies is going to solve our national debt by firing middle class people who make up .1% of the budget while also simultaneously gutting the workers rights we have earned.... make it make sense... if he wanted to solve the national debt he would tax himself more

www.koco.com

Rep. Tom Cole closely monitoring rumored layoffs at Tinker Air Force Base

Over the past week, Tinker Air Force Base employees have had growing concerns about the federal government laying off Oklahomans from the state's largest single-site employer.
www.koco.com www.koco.com
 
jrips27 said:
Going great
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It sure seems like the intent here is to hamstring and drive NWS into the ground in order to privatize the U.S. weather forecast industry.

Hope people are ready for what that means, which is that the accuracy and efficiency of the weather alerts you receive may vary significantly just depending on where you live. Not everyone will have a 1300m in their neighborhood ;). The wild wild west of weather forecasting may be getting ready to be unleashed and it won't be pretty.
 
1300m said:
It sure seems like the intent here is to hamstring and drive NWS into the ground in order to privatize the U.S. weather forecast industry.

Hope people are ready for what that means, which is that the accuracy and efficiency of the weather alerts you receive may vary significantly just depending on where you live. Not everyone will have a 1300m in their neighborhood ;). The wild wild west of weather forecasting may be getting ready to be unleashed and it won't be pretty.
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We are going to lose the GFS, NAM, and all US based models if some of the stuff I have read is true.
 
1300m said:
It sure seems like the intent here is to hamstring and drive NWS into the ground in order to privatize the U.S. weather forecast industry.

Hope people are ready for what that means, which is that the accuracy and efficiency of the weather alerts you receive may vary significantly just depending on where you live. Not everyone will have a 1300m in their neighborhood ;). The wild wild west of weather forecasting may be getting ready to be unleashed and it won't be pretty.
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Accuweathers dream come true... now we will get more of the old BHAMWX #NATGAS #Mt. Dew Baja Blast sponsored by Chex mix , cheez-its, pop-tarts , Red Bull 30 second ad 3 month 6 month 9 month 39.99 subscription 400 annual with 50 dollar add on for family members subject to sales tax …. Welcome to capitalism baby! Let’s sell weather oh yeah! I can’t wait for my first Mountain Dew Taco Bell #natgas forecast all for the cheap price of 49.99 a month !

I already smell the freedom, or is that the smell of torn up single wides with decaying bodies and flooded out homes ?


National Weather Service Duties Act of 2005 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
Welp, I did joke with a coworker today that if I see a tornado out on the road at any point, if it's safe to stop, I'll stop and try and figure out which way it's going, then turn around and go in the opposite direction, but jeez...
 
JHS said:
We are going to lose the GFS, NAM, and all US based models if some of the stuff I have read is true.
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I know some very worried folks tonight. Can’t say anything more and truthfully no one really knows what to make of any of this other than to feel extremely uneasy. So unfortunate for some of the sharpest and simultaneously most hard working people I’ve ever met.
 
Per page ES-17 from the following link, the total value of the NWS to US households was calculated in 2021 to be $102.1 billion based on an average annual household willingness to pay level (WTP) of $898.50 out of taxes:


The FY 2024 NWS budget is only $1.357 billion. So, 102.1/1.357 = ~75. Thus, US households in the aggregate are valuing the NWS at a whopping 75 times the super efficient NWS budget (i.e., a 75:1 return on investment)!
 
We’ve got a good team of Mets on this board. Let’s pay them for weather outlooks and updates. Create it. My job will be to let viewing area public know about the incoming severity of storm systems and potential impacts. I will not do winter systems though. I have a good reputation that can only go downhill from that lol
 
Avalanche said:
We’ve got a good team of Mets on this board. Let’s pay them for weather outlooks and updates. Create it. My job will be to let viewing area public know about the incoming severity of storm systems and potential impacts. I will not do winter systems though. I have a good reputation that can only go downhill from that lol
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We would have to pay lots of money to be worth their time and it’s still a private weather service ….
 
LickWx said:
We would have to pay lots of money to be worth their time and it’s still a private weather service ….
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Haha yeah I’ve actually talked to a few colleagues about this. People will be forced to pay high-dollar for a trusted name that is willing to take on the liability of issuing real-time alerts and basically being on call 24/7 365. People will regret it if NWS goes down, I guarantee it.
 
1300m said:
Haha yeah I’ve actually talked to a few colleagues about this. People will be forced to pay high-dollar for a trusted name that is willing to take on the liability of issuing real-time alerts and basically being on call 24/7 365. People will regret it if NWS goes down, I guarantee it.
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The NWS currently costs a mere ~$1/month per household!
 
GaWx said:
The NWS currently costs a mere ~$1/month per household!
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Isn't it odd that so many professional meteorologists like myself, @Webberweather53 @Ross and so many others all across the country who have a long history of putting out solid, comparable to NWS forecasts yet never call for them to be slashed or reduced? It's only the keyboard warriors who've never been in the hot seat or understand the commitment and sacrifice made by NWS mets that are calling for it.

I certainly don't benefit personally much from NWS existing (ignoring all of the NCEP data I use every day, but still not as much as 99% of the population does) and heck, who knows, I might have an opportunity to start something if they go under and yet I am as vehemently against it as anyone. Not to mention that I'm a conservative through and through. You'd think that would make people stop and think, but alas.
 
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