Notices by Daniel Swain (weatherwest@mastodon.social)

The fact that NWS field offices are not able to operate 24/7 anymore in growing number of locations, & that offices servicing major population centers no longer have supervisory meteorologists in charge, & that radar techs are becoming unavailable, is highly alarming.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/02/weather/nws-forecasting-layoffs-trump

California, and much of the West, will see (strong) a taste of spring over the next few days. A strong but relatively short-lived ridge will bring well above average late March temps, including some genuinely hot temps (80s-90s) locally. However, there may be a big shift into early Apr... #CAwx

I don't really know how to shout this from the rooftops any louder: If this actually happens, it would spell the end of U.S. numerical weather prediction--the scientific models, run on supercomputers, used to create virtually all weather forecasts. https://www.axios.com/2025/03/03/doge-noaa-weather-building-leases-trump

The now-confirmed and rumored additional cuts to come at NOAA/NWS are spectacularly short-sighted, and ultimately will deal a major self-inflicted wound to the public safety of Americans and the resiliency of the American economy to weather and climate-related disasters.
11/11

It appears that staff fired today include meteorologists, data scientists responsible for maintaining weather predictive models, and technicians responsible for maintaining the nation’s weather instrumentation network (among many others).
2/11

I work extensively with weather and climate scientists who work in the private sector—all of whom do good and important work that I greatly respect—yet even within the private sector there is near unanimous agreement that NOAA and NWS are indispensable.
6/11

Despite widespread discussion to the contrary, the fact of the matter is that the private sector, as it presently exists, simply cannot quickly spin up to fill any void› left by substantial dismantling of NOAA and/or the NWS.
5/11

NOAA & NWS collectively offer tens to hundreds of billions of dollars each year in economic benefit through combination of averted losses & efficiencies gained. More importantly, NWS saves countless lives by issuing high-quality weather forecasts & extreme weather warnings.
4/11

The U.S. NWS is a truly world-class meteorological predictive service, perhaps singularly so. Its cost of operation is only ~$3-4/yr per taxpayer—equivalent to a single cup of coffee—and yields a truly remarkable return on investment (at least 10 to 1, and perhaps 100 to 1).
3/11

Further, even a temporary or partial interruption in NOAA/NWS 24/7/365 lifesaving services—which are often used in an hour-by-hour (even minute-by-minute) context during extreme weather events and other emergencies—would be devastating.
8/11

In fact, though this is not widely known, most or all private weather companies in U.S. (including forecasts that you see on TV or your favorite app) are built directly atop backbone of taxpayer-funded instrumentation, data, predictive modeling, & forecasts provided by NOAA.
7/11

To be clear: If there were to be large staffing reductions at NOAA and NWS—at appears is now indeed underway, with credible reports of larger further cuts on horizon—there will be people who die in extreme weather events & related disasters who would not have otherwise.
10/11

The NWS is a critical public utility, and it would be extremely difficult to rebuild if torn down. This is not, in short, an acceptable setting in which to “move fast and break things.”
9/11

The mass firing of both new hires and recently promoted senior staff within #NOAA, including mission-critical and life-saving roles at the National Weather Service (#NWS), is profoundly alarming.
1/11

Out today: a brief piece in JAMA, targeted primarily toward raising awareness among clinicians, on rising incidence of #coccidioidomycosis ("valley fever" illness caused by Coccidioides fungus) in western U.S. amid a warming #climate. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2830685

Surface soils in the western U.S. have already become drier, on average & in the extremes, due to higher temperatures and increased "air thirstiness" (evaporative demand) caused by #ClimateChange. That alone might expand cocci endemicity, but there may be another factor at play.

The causative fungal organism typically thrives when soil conditions transition rapidly from wet-to-dry states, favoring a so-called "grow and blow" cycle wherein fungus first grows in damp soil then is aerosolized during windy conditions once soil dries, & humans inhale spores.

This increase is likely due to a combination of factors, including increased clinician awareness (and thus confirmatory diagnoses), but there also appears to be a true increase in actual human infections as well.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2830685

Coccidioidomycosis, which can become a serious and systemic/chronic condition in some (but not all) affected, is widely under-diagnosed (by factor of 10 or more), and incidence has sharply increased in recent years (especially in California). https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2830685

Since fungus grows best in wet conditions, but aerosolizes & spreads in dry ones, rapid transitions between wet &dry are arguably the "worst climate for cocci." Well, as I've recently discussed, increasing hydroclimate whiplash is precisely what we expect: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-024-00624-z