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When winter settles over Kansas, meteorologists face a familiar challenge: predicting not just if the sky will precipitate, but what exactly will fall from it.
A shift of only a few degrees in the lower atmosphere can flip a forecast from snow to sleet to freezing rain. This scientific puzzle holds high stakes for public safety, especially as federal budget cuts complicate the tools and data that forecasters rely on.
This year’s winter comes amid staffing shortages and funding concerns within the National Weather Service and the broader National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
In early 2025, following Trump administration cuts, the NWS lost 600 employees, according to NPR. While some positions were again filled in June, many NWS offices are still operating with limited capacities.
NOAA faces proposed budget reductions of about $2 billion, according to its 2026 fiscal year budget estimates. One potential change is to eliminate NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research as a standalone division. All of NOAA’s research laboratories across the U.S. would be shut down, including climate- and weather-focused cooperative institutes based at universities, according to a document from U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell.
Already, several U.S. weather balloon stations have reduced launches or closed entirely. These closures decrease the amount of atmospheric data available to feed forecast models, according to David Mechem, chair of the atmospheric science program at the University of Kansas.
“These observations are super important,” Mechem said. “The model’s great, but you have to have those initial conditions to start the model on its way.”
For the Midwest, where winter storms can be hard to predict, the timing of these cuts is causing some difficulty.
A forecast system under strain
Weather balloon launches, one of the victims of NOAA’s budget and staffing issues, remain essential to understanding wintertime hazards.
Twice daily, 92 stations nationwide send instrument-packed balloons into the atmosphere, measuring temperature, humidity and wind as high as 100,000 feet. In recent months, several stations in the northern Plains region have scaled back to one launch per day or halted operations altogether, according to Mechem.
Mechem said that while satellites can provide the data needed for modeling, it’s hard to beat measuring the atmosphere from within.
“People think of it as, ‘Oh, weather balloons, how quaint,’” Mechem said. “But nothing is as good as flying instruments up through the atmosphere and actually measuring things.”
Staff shortages can pose additional risks when it comes to emergency warnings. Mechem said many NWS offices have been “stretched really thin,” including the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma. The Washington Post reported in December that Goodland, Kansas, had to halt its 24-hour forecasts and is down eight meteorologists.
If severe weather had been more frequent this year, Mechem said, the impact of the shortages could have been a safety issue. With less staff, the NWS can’t get predictions and warnings sent out as quickly.
Despite the strain on forecast systems, researchers are advancing new tools. Mechem pointed to a recent KU partnership with the National Severe Storms Laboratory evaluating the Warn-on-Forecast system. The system is an experimental model that uses short-term simulations, rather than radar signatures alone, to anticipate tornado-producing storms minutes to hours in advance.
Winter forecasting: A game of inches and degrees
For meteorologists in northeast Kansas, the winter hazard that causes the most uncertainty isn’t always blizzards or bitter cold: it’s variations in precipitation type.
Chad Omitt, warning coordination meteorologist at NWS Topeka, said predicting winter precipitation is one of the most challenging parts of the NWS’s job, and has been for the last 30 years.
“Is it going to be rain? Is it going to be freezing rain, sleet or snow?” Omitt said.
The National Weather Service office in Topeka at work during a severe storm. Omitt said the Topeka office hasn’t faced any problems with staffing or equipment issues. He said the office’s main concern is accurately forecasting winter precipitation.
Mechem said the problem stems from the “temperature profile” of the lowest thousand feet of the atmosphere.
A thin layer of below-freezing air at the surface can turn falling raindrops into an icy glaze. He said a “sandwich of warm air” can melt snowflakes into raindrops, only for them to refreeze into sleet. Subtle variations in this layer can trigger rapid transformations throughout a storm.
Mechem said the challenges faced on the research side are twofold: the physics inside the cloud and the computer horsepower needed to model it. Higher-end computer models need stronger computers to run simulations, which some agencies like the NOAA may not be able to afford.
“You have hail, you have graupel, you have aggregate snow clumping together, you have sleet; understanding exactly what you’re going to get is really hard,” Mechem said. “You have to design the models to be able to represent those. That more or less comes down to just how much computer power you have.”
Tornado season goes from turbulent to tepid
Though winter weather is currently on the radar, northeast Kansas is coming off one of its quietest tornado seasons in years.
Omitt said northeast Kansas only had two confirmed tornadoes this year, compared to 20 last year. In total, Kansas averages about 80 tornadoes annually, but year-to-year differences can be extreme.
“I’ll be honest with you; sometimes it’s luck,” Omitt said.
He said the time of day a storm system blows in can determine whether it produces an outbreak of tornadoes or only thunderstorms. This timing, he said, “can make the difference between an active or above-average year and a below-average year.”
Climate patterns offer limited help with predictions. Unlike the West Coast, Kansas does not see strong winter forecasting signals from La Niña or El Niño, Omitt said. La Niña and El Niño describe climate patterns that occur from variations in ocean temperatures.
“There’s no rhyme or reason,” he said of weak La Niña years, which the United States is currently in. He said Kansas has seen various winters under similar conditions.
“It just means we’re going to be in winter, and we have to be ready for wintertime hazards,” Omitt said.
Elliot Akerstrom is a senior at the University of Kansas from Topeka, studying journalism and environmental studies.
