Balanced Weather at 1 Month
Some perspectives so far and plans going forward
Today marks 1 month since I retired from NOAA and started my Balanced Weather LLC with an initial focus on spinning up this Substack. I anticipated that starting a weather focused Substack in the middle of spring and during a chaotic period for the weather community would be a challenge, but I did not expect it to be quite this intense.
To start, the weather has produced some literally historic severe weather and flood events in the last month. First off, there was the March 14-16 period, which resulted in not only an outbreak of severe weather including approximately 100 tornadoes, 3 of which were violent EF-4s, but also a major Plains wildfire outbreak and dust storm. Experimenting with some of the ways in which I can use this Substack to provide some technical and “behind-the-scenes” perspectives, I did a three part post mortem of this event (found here: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3).
Then we moved into the March 30 through April 6 period, which produced a week of historic rain and flooding across a large swath from the Arklatex through the Ohio Valley along with more than 2,500 reports of severe weather. While damage assessments are still being finalized, it appears that about 200 tornadoes occurred during this period, along with near record flooding along the upper Ohio River and associated tributaries, especially in Kentucky which was hardest hit with rainfall.
Of course, this was what the atmosphere was producing, but humans and our political system have been producing their own chaos and impact events. During this same one month period, we went from the NWS announcing reductions in upper air flights due to staffing constraints to significant changes to the NWS organization due to staffing reductions. This culminated with Friday’s release of the Office of Management and Budget’s budget passback document for NOAA which calls for massive budget cuts including the elimination of the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research.
After a weekend to consider the ramifications of these most recent developments, I do not believe it is hyperbole to say that the weather and climate operations and research structure our country has built through an incredible partnership of the public, private and academic sectors with strong bipartisan political support - and which has been the envy of the rest of the world - is currently under threat of irreparable damage. To be honest, some of the damage has already been done. I fear that the attraction of weather and climate science as a career for young people has been severely damaged in the last couple of months, and I have no doubt that federal public service in general and NOAA specifically will never be the draw that it was literally only 6 months ago.
So this is the environment under which I have started this Balanced Weather effort. I wanted this work to be my post-retirement focus because - even without all of these political considerations - I strongly felt that we are in a pivotal moment as a society. After more than 35 years of working intimately in the weather and water world, I have zero doubt that climate change is happening, is serious, and is threatening not only humanity but our very biosphere. Climate change is exacerbating many of the various weather and water risks that I became interested in as a child and decided to study as a career. At the same time, with all of the benefits that technology and the Internet bring, the ability to communicate reasonably, effectively, and accurately about these risks seems to be getting ever more challenging. My hope with Balanced Weather is that I can contribute in some way to helping to address those communication challenges.
The political environment and the impacts on NOAA and the meteorological community are obviously a huge additional aspect to Balanced Weather. The media are doing an admirable job of trying to cover all of the potential impacts, but the weather world is a very complex landscape and the federal bureaucracy can be quite opaque. I see lots of confusion and mistakes in articles, e.g., this CNN article talking about the Meteorological Development Lab as part of the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research when in fact it is a National Weather Service entity. While I am no longer “in the arena” as a federal employee, I am hopeful that my longtime experience as a manager and leader within NOAA and the broader weather community will help me communicate about these government actions and proposals in a factual, meaningful way.
While I know there is a lot happening in the world right now, the fact that more than 50 people have died in the recent weather events I talked about above shows the importance of weather information and communication. In the month that Balanced Weather has been in existence, more than 300 of you have joined as free subscribers, which makes me think there is a desire for the type of communication and dialogue that I am trying to provide. I hope if you feel that way you will share Balanced Weather with friends and family.
Now that I have a month of using Substack under my belt, I feel like I have a better understanding of its capabilities, and I am planning to fully implement the paid services part of the Balanced Weather Substack. I want the core daily newsletter and e-mail updates to remain free to all, but I hope you will consider joining as a paid member to help support Balanced Weather and build a community of weather interested people that can learn from each other and keep our friends and families safer. If you join as a paid member, you will get the following benefits in addition to the emailed articles and posts:
Access to periodic (at least monthly) recorded video conversations with scientists in the weather and disaster communities about their research and work, and what their work could mean for the community and society
Access to live weather briefings ahead of and during significant weather events
Access to live weather chats during significant weather events. The NWS operates a chat service called NWSChat for partners like emergency managers and broadcast meteorologists. In NWSChat, the NWS provides real-time updates about what they are seeing in models, radar, satellite, etc., and the partners can ask questions. I intend to use the Substack live chat as an “NWSChat for the rest of us,” where I will provide real-time updates and there will be an opportunity for hopefully lots of discussion and questions (see bottom of article for an example from the April 2nd tornado event).
Ability to add comments and questions to Substack articles and notes
If you join as a “Founding Member” you will get the additional benefits of being able to participate on the interviews with the scientists and potentially ask questions. You will also receive access to a special founding member email address where you can submit questions about posts, something you’re curious about or if you would like to ask me for a personalized weather update.
Thanks to all of you who have joined Balanced Weather so far - and especially those of you who have already committed as paid subscribers. I am looking forward to continuing to develop this Substack, and I hope you will share with me any comments, suggestions or questions you may have to help me continue to improve it.
