The director or National Hurricane Center (NHC) Bill Proenza is threatened with firing or demotion. He was put on leave after a staff revolt that revolved around arguments of how to respond to budget cuts to the NHC and NASA earth observation programs. Congressman Brad Miller is investigating the possibility that Bill Proenza is suffering from retribution for being a whistleblower.

One key satellite is failing and no replacement is going to be launched. Moreover other useful earth observation satellites are not being launched either. Funds have been diverted away from the NHC and NASA earth observation investigations to other activities, apparently for political reasons.

An intense hurricane season is predicted, but the NHC in engulfed in internal and external battles. And a number Atlantic basin weather buoys in key locations are out of service right now. The buoys are critical for tracking storms and swell trains that cause coastal wave damage.

Bill Proenza lost his bid to change the National Hurricane Center today and Mr Rappaport will quitely bury any hope of change for this dinosaur of an agency, and NASA can go back to planning their next satellite to look at Mars weather; after all who needs new earth satellites.
I wrote a diary on July 12, 2005 that complained about the storm reporting that went on the night before. On that day the storm had moved inland and all the news media reported it was headed for Memphis when in fact the worst of the cell was headed to Nashville and the media had not updated anything after about 11:45pm.  It's not unusual down South to see the Mayor of Panama City or some other dude on TV do a pitch for FEMA help while inland we're still wondering if our backside is on the front line and if the storm is now headed for us. It seems to me weather media isn't worth watching after any storm passes the Coast and the only way to know for sure inland about a storm path is to go to real time radar and satellite. That's where NASA comes in and that's when poor Proenza lost his job.

From the AP by way of AM New York:

Hurricane Center Chief Reassigned

MIAMI (AP) -- The director of the National Hurricane Center was reassigned Monday, four days after many of the center's employees called for his removal because of his comments about an aging weather satellite. More than 20 of Bill Proenza's nearly 50 staff members signed a statement last week urging federal officials to dismiss him. They said Proenza had undermined the public's confidence in the center by exaggerating the forecasting problems scientists would face if the satellite failed.

In a continuation of the War on Truth, Bill Proenza, the head of the National Hurricane Center has been warned by his boss, acting director of the National Weather Service, Mary Glackin, to shut up about the failure of the Bush Administration to provide adequate funding for hurricane forecasting. He has been complaining since his appointment in January that NOAA should be spending money on a replacement for the obsolete QuickSat weather satellite, rather than on public relations campaigns. This is not his first warning. According to the Miami Herald

Proenza said that on April 13, he was told by Louis Uccellini, a high-ranking weather service official: ``You better stop these QuikScat [and other] complaints. I'm warning you. You have NOAA, DOC [the U.S. Department of Commerce] and the White House pissed off.''

There's more...

Under the heading: The Politics of Disaster comes this news item.  Here it is two weeks before hurricane season and the top two leaders of the National Weather Service announced their resignations yesterday.

David Johnson, director of the National Weather Service since January 2004, said he would step down on June 30. John E. Jones Jr., the service's deputy director since 1998, will retire the same day after 35 years in the government.  Weather service's top 2 quit

The National Weather Service is the controlling ageny of the National Hurricane Center.  In turn, both are under the administration of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Jones insists his retirement is not linked to on-going strife between NOAA and its daughter agencies, but has been in the works for months.  Johnson was unavailable for comment regarding his announcement.

What's the fuss?