Steven Holt: “This misguided amendment by the gentleman from Georgia would strike funding for the National Weather Service's ground…”

“This misguided amendment by the gentleman from Georgia would strike funding for the National Weather Service's ground readiness program. Now, the ground readiness program means that weather satellite signals can be collected on the ground and those data can be used in operational models and forecasts. This satellite data is critical for forecasting hurricanes. In fact, the National Weather Service used data from these NOAA satellites to accurately predict the scope and the path of Hurricane Sandy. Now, this amount is a relatively small dollar amount in the overall disaster relief bill, but this amendment is of outsized importance in its misguided intent. A recent study showed that without the polar satellite data from the weather models, the forecasters would have said Sandy would stay out at sea, would not have hit the mid-Atlantic coast. Imagine how much worse the storm damage would have been if the emergency management officials said it would never make landfall. {time} 1710 It's hard to overestimate how important accurate forecasts are. Let's accelerate the program, not slow it down. It's completely nonsensical to impair the ability of the National Weather Service to predict accurately. This is reminiscent of that ludicrous proposal a few years ago that we abolish the National Weather Service because there is a successful private cable weather channel. I urge my colleagues to reject this misguided amendment. The Acting CHAIR.…”