DOGE Cuts Vital Weather Forecasting Balloon Launches in Northern Michigan

Critics fear a reduction in weather balloon launches caused by recent cuts by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will lead to less accurate forecasting in Michigan.

Published reports say due to staffing reduction at National Weather Service offices across America standard twice-daily weather balloon launches are being either eliminated or cut back at several offices across the nation.

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Among the sites seeing reduced weather balloon launches is the NWS office in Gaylord. That branch serves all of northern Lower Michigan and the Eastern Upper Peninsula.

Though it has not official forecasting oversight over any portion of Michigan, the NWS office in Green Bay is also seeing its balloon launches cut back.

Other offices seeing reduced launches are in Colorado, South Dakota, Nebraska and Wyoming. While balloon launches will be fully eliminated over Omaha and Rapid City.

All of the launch pullbacks are being attributed to a lack of staffing.

DOGE, operating seemingly with the tech industry motto of move fast and break things, has worked quickly to reduce and/or eliminate layer of federal bureaucracy deemed as non-essential.

Can Satellite Weather Observations Replace Balloon Launches?

While some may point to satellite technology as providing enough information to not need the launching of weather balloons, a former NWS director told the Associated Press:

weather balloons get “the detailed lower atmospheric level of temperature and humidity that can determine whether the atmosphere is going to be hot enough to set off severe storms and how intense they might be.”

Satellites do a good job getting a big picture and ground measurements and radar show what’s happening on the ground, but the weather balloons provide the key middle part of the forecasting puzzle — the atmosphere — where so much weather brews, several meteorologists said.

READ MORE: These Are the National Weather Service Offices That Forecast All of Michigan's Weather

The National Weather Service is under the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) - and further under the Department of Commerce if you're really pedantic about governmental architecture. Late February NOAA cuts also saw a cut back to the Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab, a Michigan-based effort studying the Great Lakes.