In late March, the National Weather Service announced it would be temporarily reducing the number of weather balloon launches from 11 stations, including Grand Junction, as the federal agency grapples with staffing shortages amid workforce cuts. 

The federal agency has used these balloons to record weather data from the upper atmosphere since the 1930s. The launches take place twice daily from 100 sites in the United States, the Caribbean and the Pacific Basin.

Citing a “lack of National Forecast Office staffing,” the agency will now launch one balloon daily from 11 sites, including the site in Grand Junction. The only other site in Colorado that launches the balloons is in Boulder. 

“In the atmosphere, all of that data from the balloons and the weather stations and the satellites and the radars get fed into these computer models, which then use that as the baseline to start their forecast,” said Joel Gratz, the founding meteorologist of OpenSnow. “Theoretically, with fewer balloon watches, you have less data going into the models, which means you have less of an understanding of what is happening in the atmosphere right now, which means, conceivably, the forecast could be worse.”

As with all federal agencies, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — which oversees the National Weather Service — has seen staffing cuts under President Donald Trump’s workforce optimization order and the newly-created Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk. The order directs all federal agencies to eliminate “waste, bloat and insularity.” 

According to a New York Times tracker of these cuts, NOAA has reduced its workforce by 11% with additional planned reductions of 19%, equating to more than 1,000 employees. “Most” of the around 800 confirmed cuts have been reinstated and put on administrative leave following a federal court decision in Maryland, which ordered the reinstatement of federal employees, according to the report. Around 500 employees are confirmed to have taken buyouts. 

Following the announcement of layoffs, Colorado officials worried about the impact such reductions would have on weather forecasting, model development, human safety and more. 

Will reducing NWS balloon flights in Grand Junction impact forecasting? 

While only time will tell whether or not impacts are seen from the reduction of the weather balloons, one thing is certain: Less data is never better when it comes to predicting the weather.

When asked about the staffing reductions, staffing requirements for launching balloons and whether the reduction would impact forecasting, a National Weather Service spokesperson said they could only offer the following statement.

“The more data we can feed into our weather models, the more accurate our forecasts, but I can’t speculate on the extent of future impacts.” 

Gratz has spent the past 20 years studying Colorado weather. Specifically, he’s honed in on forecasting to find the best powder days. Gratz agreed that the impact these reductions will have is hard to predict. 

“There are probably hundreds of balloons across the world, and then satellites are collecting data. So what does one balloon launch do? I’m not sure in the grand scheme of things,” Gratz said. “Every shred of data is valuable. Not launching a balloon is unlikely to make a forecast more accurate.”

The balloons — which are fixed with a tool called a radiosonde — provide data on temperature, moisture, wind direction and speed and barometric pressure that is used for weather forecasting models. 

While these are one tool of many used to collect data for modeling — alongside instruments on commercial aircraft, satellites, surface stations, radars and buoys — the balloons provide information on a unique part of the atmosphere. 

“Satellites over the last 60 years have gotten better and better and better, and now satellites are providing probably the lion’s share of the data that goes into the weather models,” Gratz said. “The challenge, though, is that satellites send back a lot of data that is quite trustworthy in the middle and upper parts of the atmosphere. And weather stations send back decent data from good data from the ground.”

Balloons provide “really solid data” for that gap in the atmosphere between the stations and satellites, he added. 

In Colorado’s mountains — particularly with the snow forecasting that Gratz and OpenSnow specialize in — having as much data as possible about all aspects of the atmosphere is important.

“Oftentimes, the difference between 10 inches of snow overnight and 2 or 3 inches overnight might be a few degrees difference in temperature or a tiny difference (in the) amount of moisture,” he said. “If the satellite is good but off by a couple of degrees or a little bit in terms of moisture, that can lead to massively different weather.”

Instruments on commercial planes can also provide data for this segment of the atmosphere, but this information is generally limited by major flight paths, Gratz said. 

Gratz added that, so far, he hasn’t noticed any direct, external impacts from the recent changes at the federal agency.  

“The computer models continue to run. The data continues to flow. The radars continue to operate. The satellites continue to fly. The forecasts continue to get made,” Gratz said.  “That’s not to say that this doesn’t have long-term implications. The baseline for weather information for any app on your phone or any website is NOAA. So in one respect, I’m nervous about all of this because I think there’s some very serious long-range implications.”

How much staff time and resources go toward balloon launches?

According to a National Weather Service post detailing the launch process for the balloons, an hour before the balloons are released, a staff member spends 10 to 15 minutes inflating and preparing the balloon. The flight then takes around two hours, where the balloon can trail over 10,000 feet in altitude and drift 125 miles from the launch site. In flight, the balloon expands from 5 feet in diameter to around 20 to 25 feet wide before it pops, releasing the radiosonde to the ground with a parachute. 

Staff can spend up to four hours a day at each site launching the balloons. 

There have been some efforts to modernize the technology used by the weather service for nearly 80 years to save staff time and resources. Automating their launch was part of a broader agency reform. 

Between 2018 and 2020, the service piloted a project in Alaska to automate the process of releasing these balloons. In a blog post, NOAA reported that using “autolaunchers” in Alaska could save $1 million a year, free up staff time and improve data quality and reliability. The post reported that the weather service’s 11 stations in Alaska had three staff members whose sole job was launching the balloons. 

According to a 2021 report on the National Weather Service’s reform efforts from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the automated system reduced the amount of staff time needed per launch to 15 minutes and saved 14,800 hours of staff time annually. It reported that the National Weather Service had installed autolaunchers at 20 of 21 planned sites by August 2021. Thirteen of the sites were in Alaska. These sites were selected in places to reduce costs and address safety concerns and staffing challenges in remote locations. 

The weather service did not respond to requests for comments on whether these autolaunchers were still being utilized anywhere in the country or considered for additional stations.