Matt Lanza

Less than a month til hurricane season, and we’re just going to have to see how this year goes

Speaking from the meteorology point of view, because we are meteorologists and this is a blog about weather, the upcoming hurricane season has few question marks at the moment. We expect a somewhat active but not crazy active season. We do expect a few more big storms than a normal season. And there is broad consensus on this to this point.

How have water temps done since the end of April? Not a whole lot has changed. The basin remains above normal overall, and the changes over the last two weeks have been negligible overall. The Gulf has warmed some, but the Atlantic and Caribbean have been basically unchanged.

The Atlantic, Caribbean, and Gulf are all warmer than normal on the whole, though less so than last year. (StormVista Weather Models)

Remember, the Gulf can be prone to some decent fluctuations over shorter periods of time. But in general, it’s warm and has gotten warmer. It’s currently sitting in the middle of the pack of warmer than normal years at this point; not insanely warm but definitely above normal.

At this point, there’s not a ton new to say, and so we wait.

Hurricane season may be a minor social experiment this year

So when we start talking budgets and NOAA and things like that, we’re aiming to do it from an apolitical lens. In other words, I don’t want to travel too far down the road of advocacy or politics. But I feel we need to be honest with our readers about…things. Because this affects our work too. We’ve got a few things to note today.

First off, the White House’s discretionary budget proposal for 2026 was released last week. In a normal world, what typically happens is they unveil their priorities for cuts and increases and then Congress does the messy work of putting something together that works for themselves and can be signed by the president. And in most cases, when something deemed extreme is proposed, Congress will generally say “Woah, let’s tap the brakes there, guys.” Particularly when it comes to critical things. Well, we got an idea of what the Trump Administration wants to do with NOAA and the National Weather Service last week.

From the FY26 discretionary budget proposal. (The White House)

Throughout the budget there are cuts proposed to various elements related to climate and resiliency and mitigation. For NOAA, they’re in line for a $1.3 billion budget cut. Ignoring the political tone of these descriptions above, on the surface it would seem the administration is supportive of weather forecasting, so long as you completely ignore anything climate related. For one, in order to understand weather, you do need to understand climate, so the cuts to “unnecessary climate measurements” are actually somewhat hurtful overall. They are actually necessary.

Secondly, if you combine this with the “passback” document that was releases a couple weeks ago, it’s evident that these cuts extend beyond climate change and will impact weather research and hinder the stated goal above of “continuing to modernize core weather-monitoring capabilities.” To be quite honest, it’s tough to rectify the above stated goals with the commentary the administration has published in the passback document. So which is it? I don’t know. I do know that Congress is supportive in a bipartisan manner of the National Weather Service and their lifesaving, property-saving work and mission. And I would expect Congress to propose nothing short of fully funding the already somewhat underfunded agency. Whether the current administration is willing to go along with that is an open question, of course.

But once more, the above stated goal from the White House’s own document is to focus on weather monitoring an observations. Late last week, Andrew Freedman, who is a journalist I know personally and have a good deal of respect for published an article at his new home at CNN. Between layoffs, “strongly encouraged” early retirements, and pre-existing vacancies, the NWS is a wreck right now. One-quarter of NWS offices lack a “meteorologist-in-charge,” which is the equivalent of the chief meteorologist of each individual office. Here in my home of Houston, as we’ve previously discussed, we currently lack an MIC, the warning coordination meteorologist, and the science and operations officer, as well as an electronic system analyst. There is literally no leadership at the Houston office.

Screen shot of NWS Houston staff page as of May 4, 2025. (NWS Houston)

I want to be careful and clear here: Those that have remained in the NWS are eminently qualified individuals that are going to do their absolute best in a bad situation. These people are dedicated public servants. That said, anytime you’re working in a job where there is a significant absence of leadership, that does absolutely nothing good for anyone’s growth and development or morale. Remember, the Houston area is literally one of, if not the most disaster-prone in America.

Other offices without MICs include New York City, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Cincinnati/Columbus, Tampa, all of Kentucky, and St. Louis. According to Freedman, the Goodland, KS is no longer open 24/7. More troubling, per Freedman’s article, 90 vacancies exist among staff tasked with repairing observation sites and Doppler radars. On Friday here in Houston, unrelated to NWS cuts but a glaring example of an issue that is realistically possible in this environment, radar data was unable to be transmitted beyond the NWS office due to a data outage. And it was a critical weather day here. If the radar does go down at some point this summer, it’s an entirely realistic scenario to consider where we’d have issues seeing data as a hurricane approaches. Some people may be willing to take that risk, but I’m not sure that’s exactly prudent.

Anyway, the point of all this is to say: The NWS is an absolute mess right now because of some systemic hiring issues that pre-dated Trump II, Biden, and Trump I, but were made dramatically worse by policies and directives of the current administration. The current set of budget proposals from the current administration would most likely further degrade the NWS’s capability to achieve their mission objectives and will impair all meteorologists (public and private) from providing the most accurate forecasts and making strides in improving them any further. And aside from all that, unless the administration acts with haste to re-hire or hire anew for the many vacant positions that currently exist within the agency, we are looking at a degraded, minimalist NWS just in time for hurricane season. Literally, the actual basic functions of the agency are at risk at the moment. Again, this is fact, not an opinion. This is the current world we’re living in today. Not in 2026 or 2027. Right now.

For other disaster-related news…

Between the above and what I’ve read from the authors below, that’s why I think we’re just going to have to kind of see how things go this year. It’s not a normal environment this hurricane season.

I want to shout out four authors doing fantastic work on the ins and outs of the current state of disaster, mitigation, and resiliency. These are areas we usually won’t wade into for obvious reasons. But if you want to dig deeper and understand more, this is where I’d start. Their work long pre-dates the current administration and has been raising alarm bells for years.

Andrew Rumbach: A senior Fellow at the Urban Institute that writes about place-based plans & policies for disaster risk reduction, recovery, adaptation & resilience.

Samantha Montano: A true disasterologist who is an expert on FEMA, disasters, and emergency management.

Colleen Hagerty: “My World’s on Fire” author that’s a journalist that writes smartly about the intersection of disaster and society, as well as how policies will impact people and communities.

Susan Crawford: A senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Crawford writes about the link between finance and climate adaptation. Her work is excellent.

Following these four will give you probably more than you ever knew you needed about disasters and disaster policy. But in 2025, that is good knowledge to have.

Some miscellany to start the week on the upcoming hurricane season, observations, and NOAA

Hurricane outlook season continues

We focus a lot on Colorado State’s hurricane outlook, but many others are beginning to issue their own as well. This includes The Weather Company and Atmospheric G2, which expect a slightly more active season.

Various named storm outlooks for the 2025 hurricane season showing a generally average to above average season expected. (Seasonal Hurricane Predictions)

A number of outlooks are now public, and there seems to be a consensus that most entities buy into an active season but perhaps not a hyperactive one. Recall, last year’s hurricane forecasts were pretty unanimously doomsday, which is kind of what happened (though not in the way we all expected). This year’s are not. But the message should be that it only takes one storm, and you should prepare this season as you would any other one if you live in hurricane country.

Tropical weather outlooks from the NHC will resume in about 3 weeks.

One last note: A recent paper published in Nature Climate Change focused on storm surge extremes, and it turns out that we may be underestimating them at a majority of coastal sites due to observational gaps. As it turns out, more data is good. Which leads us to…

Putting the “fun” back in NOAA funding

In summary: There has been some good news recently, but the negatives continue to outweigh the positives.

Obviously, we are watching the developments surrounding NOAA and the National Weather Service and budget issues very closely. Here’s an update on where we stand and some apolitical thoughts on what’s going on.

One of the major issues we’ve discussed recently has been regarding staffing cuts leading to fewer weather balloon launches each day. That continues to be a problem. There has been some minor progress, however. Representative Mike Flood, a Nebraska Republican congressman has been one of a handful of political leaders that has been fairly vocal on the risks of this. In short, he gets it. The good news is that balloon launches are scheduled to return to Omaha, and improvements in launch frequency are slated for some other High Plains and Northern Plains locations. The bad news is that staffing is coming from other offices. In other words, the risk is that we may be creating more problems by solving one problem.

Sites that launched weather balloons on Sunday morning. Better, but not perfect. (NOAA)

A good example of this is happening here in Houston where the local forecast office will soon be without a meteorologist in charge, a warning coordination meteorologist, and a science and operations officer, the top 3 leadership positions in the office. While those will be filled with reassigned employees, it’s pretty evident that hiring freezes, and “strongly encouraged” early retirements are creating a math problem that will only be solved by re-hiring fired probationary employees (which the current administration is against) or bringing in new hires (which the current administration has shown no appetite for to this point). 2 + 2 + 2 is still 6 no matter if the person is in Omaha, Houston, or Fairbanks. The government allowed or “strongly encouraged” hundreds of years of cumulative forecasting experience and mentorship walk out the door in the last 2 to 3 months. So, while there are some positive signs popping up, more must be done. We are objectively worse off in terms of the National Weather Service than we were four months ago and we’re not trending better enough fast enough. Without being overly activist, I’ll just say that these are issues you should raise with your members of Congress if they concern you.

A lot of what is happening is targeting climate change research, but what a lot of the folks enacting these cuts don’t fully understand is that by targeting that, they’re likely to cause significant collateral damage to weather forecasting in the process. One good example of this was the recent failure to renew a bunch of regional climate center funding earlier this month, which caused several data sources used by meteorologists (including myself) on a regular basis to go offline. Thankfully, that funding was renewed, but the passback document unearthed recently suggests it will not be long until that’s back on the chopping block. I am also especially concerned that cuts to the GFDL, AOML, and NSSL labs, collateral damage in this fight, would cause outsized harm to weather research and forecasting. This point continues to need to be reiterated and raised. This isn’t about your stance on climate change, it’s about fundamentally degrading the capability of the NWS to achieve its mission of protecting life and property.

For a unique and helpful perspective on some of the bureaucracy here, I encourage you to follow Alan Gerard’s Substack, “Balanced Weather.” Alan is a recently retired veteran of NOAA and is very measured in his explanations. He is also anti-hype and focuses on the issues of note. A worthy newsletter to tap into.

Another thing to really understand in this whole thing: How much is a weather forecast actually worth? Planet Money recently re-aired a really good feature about the value of weather forecasts. Since 2009, when thinking of just hurricane forecast improvements alone, it’s estimated that roughly $7 billion has been saved thanks to government-driven research. And again, that’s just on hurricanes. It’s a short segment that’s worth 10 minutes of your time.

One of the most common questions I’ve heard because of the cuts is “Are you seeing impacts?” I believe we are seeing some of the issues of the reduced weather balloon launches rear their heads in real time. I have begun to notice that some higher-resolution short term models are struggling a bit more than usual in capturing significant thunderstorm complexes. Of more interest is seeing global models, like the European model do a great job depicting a threat 3 to 6 days ahead of time but then misplacing it within 3 days. Why is this happening? Theoretically, it would fit the idea that a lack of upper air data in a region would contribute to this. Is it officially the reason? No. We have to be careful, as it’s not unheard of for this to happen in spring. But it merits continued monitoring ahead of hurricane season. The takeaway right now is that missing upper air data is probably having some impact on our forecasts but mostly in a “cosmetic” fashion or “slightly higher uncertainty than usual” so far. Time will tell.

Spring heavy rain and flooding on the way to the Plains and parts of the Mid-South

The irony of writing about flooding from 34,000 feet above the Sonoran Desert doesn’t escape me at the moment, but here we are. I wanted to provide a Tuesday late day update on what’s ahead in the Southern Plains and Mid-South. Yesterday, we noted some thoughts about Mississippi River flooding and tied it back to another round of heavy rain potentially this weekend. The good news is that the hardest hit areas, such as Kentucky, southern Indiana, and Tennessee should escape significant issues if the current forecast holds between now and Monday. But, we are likely to see new issues crop up across Missouri, Arkansas, southeast Kansas, Oklahoma, or even northern Texas. This is reflected in the current flood hazard outlook.

The experimental flood hazard outlook from NOAA shows widespread river flooding continuing after the rains of a couple weeks ago, as well as an upcoming area highlighted for days 4-7. (NOAA)

The area highlighted over the Plains and Mid-South is the area we’re keeping an eye on for the weekend and early next week.

The current NOAA rainfall forecast centered over Missouri shows good odds of 2 to 5 inches of rain over the next 7 days. Other than some variations in exact placement among the various models (which you’d expect to see), this is fairly stable confidence outlook.

Roughly 2 to 5 inches are expected over a wide area from Oklahoma through Illinois over the next week. (Pivotal Weather)

We’re starting to see some solid probabilities of 4 inches or more over the next week or so show up in this area now on the European ensemble’s 51 members. Almost half of them are in that territory now. So confidence in a fairly decent rain event are growing.

About 40 to 50 percent of European ensemble members are forecasting 4 inches of rain or more over southern Missouri through next week (PolarWx)

Exactly how much rain falls and how serious any flooding will be is yet to be determined. We’ll obviously have severe weather to consider too. Currently that looks like an issue Friday through Sunday, possibly into Monday to the east. Whatever the case, we’ll continue to monitor this. Flooding is a point of interest for me personally, so events like this catch my eye.

The pendulum swings back to high water on the Mississippi River

Headlines

  • The southern half of Mississippi River will experience moderate to major flooding in the days ahead, albeit well under levels seen in other flood events in recent years.
  • But the addition of potentially significant rainfall in portions of the Mid-South this weekend (Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas) could add to Lower Mississippi flooding risks.

Flood situation on the Mississippi

About a year and a half ago, dire concerns were raised about salt water intrusion into the water supply of the Mississippi River because water levels had gotten so low. Thankfully that threat passed, and for the most part, things have been rather ho-hum in the Mississippi. We’re beginning to see signs of change now, however, as all the water from the multi-day rainstorm earlier this month dumps into the Mississippi River.

River gauges along the Mississippi and nearby tributaries that are expected to be in moderate or major flood stage over the upcoming days. (NOAA National Water Prediction Service)

None of the rises on the Mississippi look to be anything outlandish. For example, at Hickman, Kentucky, just downstream of where the Ohio empties into the Mississippi, there is major flooding expected, but still about 9 feet shy of the record from 2011.

The Mississippi at Hickman, KY will remain stable in major flood through the weekend. (NOAA)

Farther downstream at Osceola, Arkansas (just north of Memphis), the river is slated to be at a level of about 37.5 feet, which multiple floods have topped in the last 15 years.

The Mississippi at Osceola, AR will stay stable in major flood but well shy of levels seen in 2011, 2016, 2018, and 2019. (NOAA)

The story repeats down past Memphis into Mississippi, where the river will rise to moderate or major levels but nothing too absurd.

Down in Baton Rouge, the river will continue rising this week, eventually projected to crest around next Wednesday at levels similar to what had been seen in May of 2017 (and lower than levels reached in 2011, 2016, 2018, 2019, and 2020).

The Mississippi in Baton Rouge will crest sometime next week just over the mark into major flooding but lower than levels seen in 2018-2020. (NOAA)

Back to the rains in the Mid-South

One interesting element about the river forecasts is that they only contain rainfall forecasts in the next 24 to 36 hours or so. So, we assume 0 rain falls after, say this Wednesday. Which brings me to an interesting possible storyline that could develop in the Mississippi. Over the upcoming holiday weekend, a cold front is going to push into the Ohio Valley and Mid-South again. There will likely be some degree of severe weather with this, though exactly how widespread or significant remains to be seen.

Forecast surface weather map for Saturday morning, showing a cold front pushing into the Mid-South and some disturbances gathering across the Southwest. (NOAA WPC)

One thing I did notice this morning while going over my forecasting is that the ridge of high pressure setting up over the Southeast is expected to flex again this weekend. In fact, on Saturday morning, the European ensemble has about an 80 percent probability of the upper-level high pressure being in 99.5th percentile for this time of year. In simple language: It will be strong. Similar (but far less alarming at this point) than what we saw a couple weeks ago.

The probability is high that the ridge of high pressure over the Southeast will be quite strong this weekend, likely slowing or stalling the Mid-South cold front. (Polarwx.com)

So the combination of a cold front slowing or stalling as it runs into a southeast ridge would likely lead to an increasing risk of heavy rainfall. Unlike last time, where the bullseye was extremely widespread but focused on Kentucky, at least the initial odds this time favor Missouri and Arkansas. About 40 to 50 percent of the 51 European ensemble members show 3 inches or more of rainfall over northwest Arkansas through early next week, with 20 to 30 percent showing 4 inches or more.

Another round of possibly significant rain shows increasing odds this weekend from southern Missouri through Oklahoma. (Polarwx.com)

What does this all mean? For one, it means that the upcoming weather story will perhaps focus once more on the Mid-South or southern Plains. Secondly, it could mean that the forecasts for the Mississippi River, particularly those down into Louisiana have some risk of increasing in the days ahead. Or, perhaps the river will just stay high for longer, an entirely feasible outcome. Whatever the case, after a quiet week last week, the weather is beginning to look interesting again.