Hiding weather data harms more than hurricane forecasts

The Butterfly Effect is the chaos-theory idea that the flapping of an insect’s tiny wings can influence massive weather events far removed from it in distance and time.

- Mark Gongloff, Tribune News Service

It may overstate the importance of butterflies, but it is a reminder of how small actions can have larger, unforeseen consequences. An even clearer example is the Trump administration's recent decision to stop sharing military satellite data with weather forecasters just ahead of what will be a busy hurricane season. The effects will reverberate far beyond weather forecasting, threatening lives and livelihoods and even accelerating the nation’s growing home-insurance crisis.

Late last month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which houses the National Weather Service, said it would stop receiving weather data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, including readings that have long helped forecasters peer inside hurricanes to predict whether they will intensify rapidly. This information is especially useful at night, when some other observational tools aren't available and communities in a storm’s path are at their most vulnerable to an unexpected strengthening. After an outcry, the Defense Department delayed the cutoff date to the end of July. But that still means forecasters will be missing key information in the busiest part of a hurricane season that was already expected to be busier than usual. Asked for an explanation, the Defense Department basically mumbled, “Something something cybersecurity.”