By Jennifer Schulze
There’s a saying in Chicago: If you don’t like the weather, wait a few minutes. So, like many Chicagoans, first thing every morning, I check the weather app on my phone. It will tell me if Chicago is an unseasonably warm 45 degrees heading to 60 with a hint of sunshine or if the light rain will stop in 20 minutes. But It’s not always so pleasant here in the Midwest. Sometimes it is dangerous, even deadly.
In 2024, thanks to data collected and analyzed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service, my weather app warned me about excessive heat, flash floods, dense fog, high winds, extreme cold, small craft advisories on Lake Michigan and tornadoes—a lot of them. Illinois set a record for tornadoes last year: 63, including 32 in just one night in July.
Now, with tornado season looming, our access to valuable weather information is under threat. The U.S. government‘s stellar weather information service is being torn apart and likely sold for parts as Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency implement another destructive chapter of the Project 2025 playbook: experienced scientists fired, senior meteorologists forced into retirement, broken radars left unrepaired, weather forecasting balloons not launched, and leases for vital forecasting units canceled. The loss of expertise is profound, and the impact will be widespread. We’ll all be less safe, the economy will suffer and, yes, those popular weather apps could miss the next big storm.
We are already seeing the impact. In California this past weekend, NWS offices struggled with staff shortages. Two weather radars broke, and repairs for the mission-critical equipment are on hold. In San Diego, that meant the weather apps failed to note a coming rainstorm. In the San Francisco Bay Area, not only was the main radar down, but the back-up system also failed. The accuracy of the weather forecast there was also in doubt.
Here in Chicago, one person is synonymous with weather: revered TV meteorologist Tom Skilling.
“I'm inclined, based on my decades of work with the National Weather Service, to invoke the old adage, ‘If it ain't broke, then don't try and fix it’,” the weather legend said.
For 45 years, Skilling did remarkably comprehensive, unusually long weather forecasts grounded in science and delivered with enthusiasm. His segments were must-watch TV across the country via WGN-TV’s extensive national cable audience. Skilling’s expertise guided Chicago through devastating weather events over the years, including the 1995 heat wave that killed more than 700 people. For all of it, he says he relied on data and analysis from his highly respected peers at the National Weather Service.
“Our city has been brought to a standstill by blizzards, been ravaged by tornadoes and flooding and ... residents have experienced the coldest and very nearly hottest weather ever recorded—and all that in our lifetimes,” Skilling said. “Weather here matters.”
Tom Skilling delivering one of his comprehensive weathercasts on WGN-TV on Feb. 28, 2024. (Photo courtesy of Tom Skilling.)
Now Skilling is gravely concerned that Chicago-and the rest of the country—might be at risk because of the DOGE cutbacks. Skilling told me: “I'm concerned—and I think others should be as well--about the dismantling or, at minimum, degradation of our National Weather Service given the public safety and scientific research functions at the heart of its mission.”
He added: “There's the erroneous notion afoot in some circles that these are bloated agencies—inappropriately flooded with public funds. This doesn't conform with anything I've seen over my more than half century of meteorological work. The truth is, I've marveled over the years at the efficiency with which the National Weather Service and NOAA have done what they're charged with doing. Truth is, there have actually been a number of reviews of the Weather Service which have suggested the agency is underfunded given all they do for the American public.”
I worked with Skilling at WGN, so I know firsthand how serious he is about weather forecasting and how much he respects the scientists and the government agencies that underpin it. Skilling says the NWS is the very best in the world and he'd tell that to Elon Musk if he could. He’d also counsel Musk and his team to avoid closing any of the 122 regional forecasting offices like the one we have here in suburban Chicago that keep an eye out for tornadoes and other bad weather.
“When local Weather Service meteorologists spot a tornado and project its potential path, they know where schools, hospitals and other weather vulnerable structures and populations are located—critical to assess risk. Local offices provide absolutely critical ‘ground truth’—a description of what's going on in rapidly developing severe weather situations when tornadoes are hopscotching across the area with sometimes devastating impacts—through their connection with local municipalities, spotters and other sources.”
Chicago has had a weather reporting office of sorts since the late 1800s, when President Ulysses S. Grant approved the “Army Signal Service” to help prevent shipwrecks on Lake Michigan. One year later, the weather observation office burned to the ground in the Great Chicago Fire. It took just six days to reopen it in a rented office in part of the city spared by the blaze.
Now, more than 150 years later, that local office is part of a nationwide weather operation that is on the job 24/7.
“Every piece of meteorological information you see or hear on television and radio, that you view on your iPhone has originated with our remarkable National Weather Service,” Skilling said. “Every satellite or radar image, seven or 10-day forecast, every tornado warning or winter storm watch has its origin with our National Weather Service.”
The NWS weather information is also free and available to all. It’s a public good, much like the U.S. Postal Service, that should not be privatized and sold to the highest bidder, as outlined in Project 2025. Skilling agrees. “It's hard to imagine any private entity operating a satellite system, supercomputers, mammoth communication system, all the weather observations, and all the buoys that are needed,” he said.
The National Weather Service is a government success story. As Skilling told me, “The weather never stops—nor do my National Weather Service colleagues.” For about $4 a year, we get the best scientists in the world watching a staggering number of weather events each year. Tens of thousands of thunderstorms, 5,000 floods, 1,300 tornadoes, hurricanes, droughts and an increasing number of wildfires. Their work makes it safe to fly. Their work informs farmers when to plant and harvest. Their work determines when to sound tornado alarms and when to evacuate from the path of a hurricane. That all adds up to more than 3 billion weather forecasts a year. Now, as the tornado season starts and the hurricane season near, none of that seems to matter to the ideologues in charge. But it certainly should.
Jennifer Schulze is a longtime Chicago journalist. She’s on Bluesky @newsjennifer.bsky.social and Substack at “Indistinct Chatter.”
