Weather forecasters at the National Hurricane Center have struggled for more than a decade to issue accurate storm reports using broken equipment, an overbooked airplane fleet and tight budgets, a newspaper reported on Sunday.
Key forecasting equipment that was used by the center has broken down or been unavailable for nearly half of the 45 hurricanes that have struck land since 1992, the Miami Herald found after an eight-month investigation.
"It's almost like we're forecasting blind," said Pablo Santos, a science officer at the National Weather Service's Miami office, which assists the hurricane center during storms. "We've never really had the equipment to do it."
Hurricane Center director Max Mayfield and four former directors said that equipment gaps have compromised forecasts, including those for Hurricane Andrew in 1992, Erin in 1995 and Mitch in 1998.
The equipment problems include broken devices such as data-transmitting buoys, weather balloons, radar installations and ground sensors, as well as hurricane hunting airplanes that are overbooked and unavailable to fly weather-observation missions.
"We need help," Mayfield said. "We need more observation [equipment]. There's no question."
National Weather Service officials cited the expense of the equipment and its maintenance. They also said there was an overlap, so if a radar installation or buoy fails, another one a few hundred kilometers away can help.
"Could the Hurricane Center do a better job? Yes ... But we're working within a resources-available environment," Weather Service chief D.L. Johnson said.
After last year's hurricanes, the US Congress approved US$8.8 million to fix damaged equipment, add more buoys, upgrade hurricane hunter planes and bolster research.
The Herald reviewed audits, e-mails, government databases, maintenance records, accounting reports and congressional testimony, as well as flight logs and interviews. It found that data buoys have been broken for months, and weather balloons are inoperable or missing in some areas, especially in the Caribbean.
Also, despite nearly US$2 billion spent in the 1990s for Doppler radar installations and electronic weather sensors, they often fail during lightning and power outages in severe weather. The weather sensors shut down more than 60 times during the four hurricanes that struck Florida last year.
Further, they found that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's two hurricane-hunting turboprop planes are sometimes sent on missions during hurricane season that have little to do with tropical storms. And the budget for the agency's Gulfstream jet isn't enough to fly continuous missions during storms.
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