National Weather Service faces sequestration, furloughs and reduced reporting capabilities

You know what would be a really great idea? If we just slowed down on that whole "warning people that severe weather might be coming their way" bit. What could go wrong?

An 8.2 percent across-the-board cut in spending, from the so-called sequester, will trim already financially-depleted programs critical for maintaining and improving the NWS' weather capabilities. [']

'Sequestration will also reduce the number of flight hours for NOAA aircraft, which serve important missions such as hurricane reconnaissance and coastal surveying,' said a DOC spokesperson. 'NOAA will also need to curtail maintenance and operations of weather systems such as NEXRAD (the national radar network) and the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (used by local weather forecast offices to process and monitor weather data), which could lead to longer service outages or reduced data availability for forecasters.'

About 4,000 NOAA employees and contractors will face furlough. While the cuts are likely to reduce weather data available to local forecasters, the good news is that all rich people have their own weather satellites and forecasting teams so they won't be affected.

Remember: We're doing all this so Republicans can keep an ideological promise to never raise any (well-off) person's taxes, ever, no matter what, but we also have to cut the deficit right now because holy crap, the moment Barack Obama was elected they remembered there was something called a deficit. That's the only reason. It'd take all of five minutes to write up a bill repealing the whole thing, but they won't because it would make them look bad.