Episode summary
Your Weather App Could Soon Develop Blind Spots | Bloomberg Businessweek
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily
· · Hosts: Carol Massar, Tim Stenovec · Guests: Mark Gongloff
Summary
Weather apps may become less reliable because the US weather-forecasting system is losing data as budget and staffing cuts reduce weather balloon launches and strain the National Weather Service. Mark Gongloff argues that the biggest gap is across parts of the Great Plains, Midwest, and Pacific Northwest, where balloon launches are running at about half their prior pace, limiting the atmosphere-level data forecasters use to track storms before they intensify.
He says the immediate effect may be hard to measure, but the risk rises most for extreme weather such as flash floods, sudden tornadoes, and hurricanes that intensify quickly. He also points to broader operational stress at the Weather Service, including layoffs, understaffing, and slower website maintenance, which can erode forecast quality and institutional knowledge over time.
Gongloff adds that weaker forecasts carry economic costs. Insurers may have to price more uncertainty into home premiums, and businesses that rely on weather data will face more disruption. He argues the private sector cannot fully replace government data right now, though political pressure could build if a major forecast failure or disaster makes the cuts impossible to ignore.
Key takeaways
- Mark Gongloff says some parts of the US are getting about half the weather balloon launches they used to, leaving major data gaps.
- He argues the biggest forecasting risk is missing extreme weather, especially flash floods, sudden tornadoes, and intensifying hurricanes.
- He says weaker forecasts could push home insurance premiums higher as insurers price in more uncertainty.
- Gongloff says private companies still rely on National Weather Service data, so the private sector cannot easily fill the gap.
- He notes Europe has strong models, but replicating US weather infrastructure would take years and major public investment.
Notable quotes
“there's a big chunk of the United States from the Great Plains up to the Midwest and the Pacific Northwest where you're getting about half the number of weather balloon launches that you used to get”
“what these things are is they're like MRIs for the atmosphere going from this ground all the way to the troposphere”
“the thing with these balloons is that what you miss most often is extreme weather. And that's the thing we care about the most unfortunately”
“if the forecasts start to deteriorate over time, insurance companies say, "Hey, I've got all this uncertainty now about where tornadoes and such are going to land”
“you can't replace this with the private sector, unfortunately, at the moment, because all the private sector gets this stuff straight from the NWS, straight from the US government”
How the episode opens
Bloomberg Audio Studios podcasts, radio, news. — You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenc on Bloomberg Radio. — Going to be hot tomorrow. At last check, my weather app said 97 degrees here in New York. — It's crazy.
Yeah. Who knows if that's actually accurate, though.
It's our reality though of where we are. Um Yeah. And what's interesting is we did see um a couple of headlines crossing earlier.
the biggest US power grid failing for a third straight time to secure enough future supply commitments to ensure reliability in coming years amid a boom in uh data center demand. So uh we're talking about um PJM um that power grid and it's something that we've talked about a lot. They see total capacity costs tying a record of 16.4 billion.
So, the power grab continues and it doesn't help that when you've got really hot temperatures, you you're seeing really kind of stress in terms of air conditioning. We may not need it here in this studio because it's my fingers are numb right now.
I think it's a perfect temperature unfortunately. I'm sorry. — I have hand warmers. That's how cold it is. But anyway, — Well, you heard me. You heard me mention that. I don't know if the weather app is actually going to be accurate because who knows if that
Is actually accurate. who knows that the data that they're getting from the government right now is actually as good as that data can be. That's what Mark Gongoff writes about. He's a Bloomberg opinion editor and columnist. He covers climate change. He joins us now uh from New Jersey. Mark, I'm so glad that you wrote this story. You you actually reference a piece that made the rounds in the Stenc family chat which was from Gizmodo last week.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- weather forecasting data cuts
- extreme weather detection
- insurance cost uncertainty
- real-time data gaps
- alarm fatigue
Watch the episode
Watch “Your Weather App Could Soon Develop Blind Spots | Bloomberg Businessweek” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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