Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Homeland Security dictate .. one consequence a no to volunteers, so less experience ..

Less Safe, Thanks to the Dept. of Homeland Security

I suppose this goes under the category of unintended consequences. A few years ago, the Department of Homeland Security began requiring security clearances for everyone working in a National Weather Service forecast office. I don’t know whether they imagined radical Americans or secret agents from other countries would try to infiltrate NWS offices and suppress tornado warnings, issue forecasts that were a few degrees too warm, or what exactly.

Their edict extended not just to paid employees, but to volunteers. Many meteorology students volunteer with local NWS offices during the summer, in order to gain valuable experience in operational meteorology. They’re not issuing tornado warnings, but they are helping out with observations, data collection, simple forecasts, and other routine work. The NWS office benefits too, because in addition to the extra person-power, it gets to evaluate how good these candidates for future employment with the NWS actually are.

When volunteers came under the DHS edict, it was at first only a major inconvenience. I say major, because it takes a few months to obtain a security clearance. So if a student shows up in May and offers to help for the summer, it might be until August that they can actually be let inside the building to help out.

This year, though, the NWS budget is tighter than it ever has been. In some regions of the country, the NWS has decided that there’s simply not enough money left in the budget to pay for obtaining security clearances for potential volunteers. Students who are willing to work for the NWS for free are being turned away because the NWS cannot afford them.

The long-term consequence of all this is that the new forecasters the NWS hires will, on average, have less experience, and the NWS will no longer have firsthand information regarding which candidate forecasters will be able to contribute the most to the forecast office. Ultimately, there will be a negative impact on watches and warnings. A rule designed to make us infinitesimally more safe will instead make us less safe.

http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2012/03/less-safe-thanks-to-the-dept-of-homeland-security/

all thanks to Homeland Security .. lol, sideeki, we still don't know WHY?