Props to Meteorologist John Morales

Much respect to Florida meteorologist John Morales for calling attention on the air to how DOGE cuts degrade weather forecasts and will get people killed and cause needless economic damage, especially in Florida. 

Morales worries most about missing the phenomenon of rapid intensification, like what happened with Hurricane Otis in Acapulco. It’s a huge concern. 

I worry more about the missed balloon launches. The sub-tropical pressure gradient is sometimes so flat that distant events, like the presence or absence of thunderstorms in Venezuela, or the speed of storms coming out of the Canadian Rockies, can affect the paths of hurricanes. Implemented by DOGE morons, the balloon deficit is not evenly spread across the U.S., but is concentrated in the Great Plains. Missing those balloon launches means uncertainty. You poke yourself in the eye and you blow the hurricane path forecast, which costs money and lives:

"As you've grown accustomed to my presentations over my 34 years in South Florida newscast, confidently, I went on TV and told you, 'It's going to turn. You don't need to worry,'" Morales said on the air. 

Then he dropped the bombshell: "I'm here to tell you I'm not sure I can do that this year. Because of the cuts — the gutting, the sledgehammer attack on science, in general, and I could talk about that for a long, long time and how that's affecting the leadership and science over the years and how we're losing that leadership, and that is a multi-generation impact on science in this country."