Toledo, OH -
An eye in the sky could go blind in the years to come. Without weather satellites, meteorologists have a tough time seeing clouds and vital weather data in remote locations. That weather information goes straight into computer models which help to forecast the weather all around the world.
The outgoing chief, Jane Lubchenco, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA for short, recently spoke out about recent budget cuts including the sequester. The cuts could keep a new weather satellite grounded. Depending on the endurance of the current satellites in space, that could mean no polar orbiting satellite pictures for 1 to 5 years starting in 2016.
Recently research has been done showing what would happen without that vital weather information. Hurricane Sandy's forecast would have originally tracked the storm away from the east coast before catching on to the northwestern turn. That would have reduced the warning time by 1 to 2 days.
More research was done on coastal winter storms. In one extreme example, the forecast without the satellite data only forecasted half of the snowfall as it did with the data during a massive blizzard in 2010.
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