National Weather Service faces hurricane season with less experienced staff, missing data

[ultralite001]

2. More on the "missing data"...

From the same article...

"Among the most urgent is the restoration of what's called "upper air" data, which Thoman and Gerard said has noticeably declined or degraded since January 2025.

The data is considered by many to be fundamental to forecasting models, particularly in scenarios where weather is changing rapidly. It has historically been collected by weather balloons, synced to launch twice daily from sites nationwide, and in other parts of the world, too.

Several U.S. weather stations no longer launch balloons twice daily, or at consistent morning and evening times, records show, which Cei said is "due to temporary resource and equipment constraints."

It's an unprecedented change, Gerard said.

"There's concern about the quality of the models because of the lack of upper air data," he said. "There's a lot of expression of just being less confident, and having less confidence in your data tends to undermine a lot of your operational decisions, right?"