Flying blind: On weather, climate, and the tragedy in Texas

Last month, a clip of John Morales, a veteran broadcast meteorologist on NBC6 in Miami, went viral. The clip opened in 2019—showing Morales calmly and confidently telling frightened viewers that Hurricane Dorian, a devastating storm that had just battered the Bahamas, would turn before hitting Florida—before cutting back to the present day. “I am here to tell you that I’m not sure I can do that this year,” Morales said with a grimace, referring not to a new storm but to his level of confidence in hurricane forecasts generally. The reason: “the cuts, the gutting, the sledgehammer attack on science” underway within the Trump administration, which have led, among other things, to significant understaffing within National Weather Service offices and a drop in the release of weather balloons. “What we’re starting to see is that the quality of the forecasts is becoming degraded,” Morales said. When it comes to future hurricanes, “we may be flying blind.” Last week, Morales was back on air with an update, warning that “data-loss worries” had only intensified since his viral moment, and referring to a new Trump budget proposal that would gut various research offices across the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (which houses the NWS). “I’d prefer to be talking about meteorology,” Morales said, but “we have to cover” the cuts.