Reimaginging and Reforming the National Weather Service

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The non-hurricane warnings for Hurricane Sandy. The Hurricane Sandy Assessment Team mess. Financial scandal. Likely critical gap in weather satellite coverage. All within the past nine months. 

From the University of Washington's Dr. Cliff Mass,

As noted in various publications, trillions of dollars of U.S. economic activity are sensitive to weather (Dutton 2002), with nearly a half-trillion dollars of variability in our economy due to weather (Lazo et al., 2011).  Furthermore, the U.S. experiences a wide range of severe weather conditions (tornadoes, hurricanes, severe convection, windstorms, snowstorms) that not only results in economic impacts, but the loss of hundreds to thousands of lives a year from intense weather...

But the sad truth is that we are lagging behind the world leaders, and are even farther behind our inherent capabilities.  The loss to the nation, both in lives and economic value, is immense and unnecessary.   It is time to face up to the problems and fix them.

Cliff provides details here. I agree completely.

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