NWS in Nashville tries to keep sunny outlook despite DOGE cuts
"It'll tug on you, and you let it go," she told her young helpers as they prepared to set the orb aloft.
The 6-foot sphere climbed toward the clouds. Onlookers waved goodbye. Some roared in awe.
"I've never seen a weather balloon," said Bryce Hoyt, 10, of Mt. Juliet. "I was expecting it to be a normal-size balloon."
The latex object, filled with hydrogen, was headed more than 20 miles up into the Earth's lower atmosphere, Holley explained during the July 15 demonstration at the National Weather Service's Nashville office. Its flight was expected to last about two hours, during which it would transmit data back every minute to the weather service office, tracking atmospheric pressure, humidity, temperature and wind speed.
"Our launch will help mold what we're forecasting," Holley said. Balloons also help the National Hurricane Center track storms.
NWS sends balloons up at 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. daily. Eventually they reach an altitude where pressure dissipates. Then they expand to the size of a single-story house and pop, Holley said.
Bryce played a hand in this week's event, helping tie a knot around the ballon's base. He'd love to become a meteorologist some day, he said, so he can be in charge of releasing the balloon.
Uncertain future forecast for NWS
The balloon launch was part of an event meant to help the public to learn about the weather agency. It came amid budget cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that experts warn threaten the future of agencies that operate under NOAA, like the National Weather Service.
'It will stop all progress' in U.S. forecasting, James Franklin, who retired in 2017 as chief of the National Hurricane Center's forecast specialists, told USA TODAY. 'We're going to stagnate and we're not going to continue to improve as we go forward.'
"If NWS products and services are reduced, we all suffer," renowned Alabama meteorologist James Spann said in a social media post earlier this year, "especially during times of life-threatening weather."
Inside Climate News, a nonprofit news organization, reported that federal cuts have led to a decrease in the number of weather balloon launches across the country.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick defended the cuts during a June 5 hearing on Capitol Hill, saying NOAA is 'transforming how we track storms and forecast weather with cutting-edge technology.'
The weather service's Nashville office lost about seven employees from Jan. 1 to May 27, records show.
The weather service has 16 employees with seven openings as department operate under a hiring freeze, according to NOAA spokesperson Marissa Anderson.
"The National Weather Service continues to meet its core missions amid recent reorganization efforts and is taking steps to prioritize critical research and services that keep the American public safe and informed," she said in a statement. "NWS is committed to investing in new technology and prioritizing public safety."
Anderson said NWS is working to fill filed positions to be advertised as critical and an exception to current hiring freezes. She did not say if any of those positions would emanate from Nashville.
The weather service employees around 4,250 people across 122 local offices, each doing the same daily balloon launches.
The proposed White House budget for NOAA would see a 40% cut, or approximately $2.3 billion less than in 2024.
It costs around $1 billion to fund NWS across the country; Holley said that equates to $3 per person in the United States to fund the agency that provides life-saving weather information to people impacted by flooding, tornadoes and other severe weather events.
"We issue severe weather warnings and watches," Holley said. "We are the only people in America that can do that," she said. "We issue 7-day forecasts for the entire nation. We monitor river conditions.
"We are here watching the weather for you guys."
USA TODAY reporter Dinah Voyles Pulver contributed to this story.
Reach reporter Craig Shoup by email at cshoup@gannett.com and on X @Craig_Shoup. To support his work, sign up for a digital subscription to www.tennessean.com.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: NWS in Nashville works to help inform public amid funds cuts
Solve the daily Crossword
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Bloomberg
29 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Too Many Scientific ‘Discoveries' Get Discredited
It's not a good look for science when the most hyped, heavily marketed, and supposedly transformative discoveries are later discredited. Among the more spectacular cases were claims that a team of scientists had discovered fossilized Martian life in a meteorite, and that spores found in amber and salt crystals had been revived after lying dormant for millions of years. Last week, the research journal Science finally retracted a headline-grabbing study published in 2010, which claimed scientists had found arsenic-based life. NASA had promoted the discovery as bolstering the case for the existence of extraterrestrials and a new tree of earthly life known as the 'shadow biosphere.'
CBS News
29 minutes ago
- CBS News
Salt's "chilling" effect
Salt! It is sugar's savory cousin and is mostly thought of as an ingredient in food. It is much more than that, though. Salt is essential to your body's functions. It melts snow and ice in the winter, and you can use it to help cream freeze to make a delicacy sent from the cream! At least that's the way we are going to make ice cream today. You might be thinking to yourself, "salt melts liquids, so why would you need that for ice cream?" Adding salt to water technically does not melt it. It just lowers the freezing temperature of water, which does melt it until you hit that lower temperature. While it lowers the freezing temperature, it actually gets colder too! You heard that right. Adding salt to water makes the water colder, as you can see! That probably seems backwards. Dissolving salt in water requires energy, so that energy is absorbed from the water, causing the temperature to drop. The same goes for salt on ice! The salt dissolves on the ice, dropping the freezing temperature of the ice, but making it colder at the same time. Purdue University says this is an endothermic reaction, or a chemical reaction that occurs with the absorption of heat. We are going to use this knowledge to make our version of one of science's greatest cream! My ice cream maker is a little different. On one side of this ball, you put your ingredients in a compartment. The other side of the ball gets filled up with ice and rock salt, kosher salt, or ice cream salt. That is where our reaction will happen, causing the temperature to drop. To turn this into ice cream, we have to shake and roll, and play with this ball for 25 minutes! The action makes sure the salt is dissolving on the ice, lowering the temperature. It also churns the cream, making sure that large ice crystals don't form. This also allows air inside the freezing cream, helping it to be creamy, rather than rock-hard. It is a lot of work, but the science and ice cream are worth it. Using salt and ice's endothermic reaction was how they made ice cream in the olden days. This ball is just a new take on the classic way to make ice cream.
Washington Post
an hour ago
- Washington Post
Since wolves' return, Yellowstone's aspens are recovering, study finds
Three decades after wolves were reintroduced in Yellowstone National Park, aspen stands are recovering, a new analysis suggests. Published in Forest Ecology and Management, the study looks at what happened after 1995, when wolves were reintroduced to the park. During most of the 20th century, there were no apex predators in the park aside from bears and cougars, and elk increased to record numbers.
