The forecasts of the National Hurricanes Center by 2024 were the most precise registered, from their one -day forecasts, when tropical cyclones approached the coast, to their forecasts five days in the future, when storms just began to form.
Thanks to research financed with federal funds, the forecasts of tropical cyclones trajectories today are up to 75% more precise than in 1990.
A prognosis of the National Hurricanes Center three days in advance today is almost as precise as a day prognosis in 2002, which gives people in the path of the storm more time to prepare and reduces the size of the evacuations.
The precision will be crucial again in 2025, since meteorologists predict another active season of hurricanes in the Atlantic, which will run from June 1 to November 30.
However, personnel cuts and threats to the financing of the Oceanic and Atmospheric National Administration – which includes the National Hurricane Center and the National Meteorological Service – are decreasing the operations on which meteorologists depend.
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Essential components of the weather forecast; following the wind
To understand how it is likely to behave a hurricane, meteorologists need to know what is happening in the atmosphere away from the coasts of the Atlantic and the Gulf.
Hurricanes are guided by the surrounding winds. The wind patterns detected today in the rocky mountains and the big plains – place such as Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska and Dakota del Sur – offer meteorologists clues about the winds that will probably hit the coasts of the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic in the next few days.
Satellites cannot take direct measurements, so to measure these winds, scientists resort to weather balloons. These data are essential for both forecasts and to calibrate the complex formulas used by meteorologists to make estimates from satellite data.
However, at the beginning of 2025, the Trump administration canceled or suspended meteorological balloons in more than a dozen places. That measure and other cuts and threats of cuts in the NOAA have sounded the alarms among meteorologists throughout the country and the world.
Meteorologists around the world, from television to private companies, depend on NOAA data to do their job. Many of these data would be extremely expensive, if not impossible, to replicate.
In normal circumstances, weather balloons are launched from around 900 locations worldwide at 8:00 am and 8:00 pm, east time (EU), every day. While loss of only 12 of these profiles may not seem significant, small amounts of missing data can cause great prognosis errors. This is an example of chaos theory, better known as the butterfly effect.
The balloons carry a small instrument called Radiosonda, which records data as it rises from the earth’s surface to about 36,500 meters high. The Radiosonda acts as a integral weather station, transmitting detailed information about temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and direction and atmospheric pressure every 4.5 meters during its flight.
Together, all these measurements help meteorologists interpret the atmosphere and feed the computer models that are used to help forecast the weather throughout the country, including hurricanes.
Hurricane hunters
For more than 80 years, scientists have been flying airplanes to hurricanes to measure the strength of each storm and help predict their career and damage potential.
Known as “Hurricanes Hunters”, these teams from the US Air Force Reserve and NOAA perform routine recognition missions during the hurricane season using various instruments. Like meteorological balloons, these flights make measurements that satellites cannot perform.
Hurricane hunters use a Doppler radar to measure the wind and a lidar to measure temperature and humidity changes. They place probes to measure the temperature of the ocean at several hundred feet deep and indicate how much hot water could be present to feed the storm.
They also launch 20 to 30 probes, measurement devices with parachute. As they fall through the storm, they transmit data on temperature, humidity, speed and wind direction, and atmospheric pressure approximately 4.5 meters from the plane to the ocean.
Hurricane Hinter flight probes are the only way to directly measure what happens inside the storm. While satellites and radars can see the inside of hurricanes, these measurements are indirect and lack the fine resolution of probes data.
These data indicate to meteorologists of the National Hurricane Center the intensity of the storm and if the surrounding atmosphere favors its strengthening. Dropsandeo data also help computer models predict the trajectory and intensity of storms in advance.
Two flight directors of the NOAA hurricane hunter were fired in February 2025, leaving only six when 10. The directors are the flight meteorologists aboard each flight that supervise the operations and guarantee that the airplanes remain away from the most dangerous conditions.
Having less directors limits the amount of flights that can be sent during peak hours, when the hunting hunters monitor multiple storms. This would limit the accuracy of the data that the National Hurricane Center would have to forecast storms.
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Eyes in heaven
Meteorological satellites that monitor tropical storms from space provide continuous images of the trajectory and intensity changes of each storm. The equipment of these satellites and the software used to analyze it allow increasingly precise hurricane forecasts. Much of this team is developed by researchers financed with federal funds.
For example, Wisconsin and Colorado cooperative institutes have developed software and methods that help meteorologists better understand the current state of tropical cyclones and forecast their future intensity when aerial recognition is not immediately available.
Loading a rapid intensification is one of the great challenges for scientists specialized in hurricanes. This is the dangerous change that occurs when the wind speed of a tropical cyclone increases at least 56 kilometers per hour (35 mph) in 24 hours.
For example, in 2018, the rapid intensification of Hurricane Michael surprised Panhandle in Florida. Category 5 storm caused billions of dollars in damages throughout the region, including the Tyndall Air Base, where several F-22 pools were still in hangars.
According to the details of the Federal Budget Proposal published to date, including a draft of the Budget Plans of the Agencies, reviewed by the Trump Administration and Budget Office (known as “Passback”), there are no funds for cooperative institutes. There are also no funds for aircraft recapitalization. A NOAA plan for 2022 sought to buy up to six new aircraft for hunting hunters.
The returned budget also cut the financing for some technologies of future satellites, including ray mappers that are used to forecast the intensity of hurricanes and to warn airplanes about risks.
Only one is needed
Tropical storms and hurricanes can have devastating effects, as Hurricanes Helene and Milton reminded the country in 2024. These storms, although well forecast, caused billions of dollars in damages and hundreds of deaths.
The United States has faced more intense storms, and the coastal population and the value of endangered properties are increasing. As five former director of the National Meteorological Service wrote in an open letter, cut the financing and staff of the NOAA to improve forecasts and alerts threatens to put more lives at risk.
*Chris Vagassky is a meteorologist and director of the Research Program of the University of Wisconsin-Madison
This article was originally published in The Conversation
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