Hurricane This, NOAA

The Miami Herald has a sobering story on the continued underfunding of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's hurricane forecasting system.

Reporter Debbie Cenziper writes that since 1995 the NOAA has allowed the hurricane research division to languish with only nominal funding increases -- if any.

"It's difficult to track how much money researchers have asked for and why it was denied. That's because requests for budget increases made by NOAA agencies including the Hurricane Research Division are considered a part of internal planning -- kept outside the view of Congress and the public. NOAA administrators decide which projects to support, then send an agency-wide request every year to the Department of Commerce and eventually to the president.

'''It means Congress can think they're funding hurricanes properly when they're not,' said research meteorologist Mike Black, a 20-year division veteran ...

"At the Research Division, it has come to this: [hurricane division researcher Mike] Black studies the intricacies of storms that killed thousands of people on a rigged personal computer because the one NOAA gave him was 8 years old and obsolete. Key data from hurricane hunter flights is stored on a 10-year-old computer; there's no money to replace it.

"The screen that researchers use to dissect satellite images is a hand-me-down from a lab in Colorado. Devices they rely on to test ocean temperature were Cold War leftovers donated by the Navy."