Central Kansas’s skies went from clear to terrible in what seemed like minutes on April 13 evening. In three counties, baseball-sized hail tore through the air. It was hit by two tornadoes. And the official forecast from the regional storm prediction center said there was no chance of thunderstorms at all.
Thomas Winter, who is in charge of emergencies in Franklin County, Kansas, remembers it very well. The twister happened without much warning, and that wasn’t a coincidence. It was caused by something quieter and slower-moving than a storm: budget cuts, staff reductions, and a data network that’s been slowly falling apart.
A lot of weather balloons are used by the National Weather Service. These instruments go up into the air twice a day to measure wind speed, temperature, humidity, and pressure. This is the kind of raw data that tells a meteorologist whether the conditions are right for a tornado or just a passing cloud. In this age of satellites, the idea of a balloon doing the work sounds almost cute. However, it is really hard to copy the data they collect. These balloons aren’t always going up when they should right now.
Because of the Trump administration’s DOGE-era cuts to the federal workforce, National Weather Service offices in the West and Midwest don’t have enough staff to reliably run the midnight and early-morning balloon launches. This leaves big holes in the data picture that meteorologists are trying to fill in real time, but often don’t have the tools to do so properly. Since last year, Alan Gerard was in charge of NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma. He has been clear about what these gaps mean. You have to take the morning balloon readings. There are effects to missing them.
The geography around Kansas City has never been very good at dealing with bad weather. The area gets hit hard by storms from the Great Plains, and there isn’t much room for error when tornado warnings are given. Every second counts. What a forecaster can tell a community at 6 p.m. depends on accurate data about the weather from hours earlier. Without that information, the forecast is just a guess, even if the tools are better.
In June of this year, Kansas City was in the middle of a different kind of weather event that was in the news all over the world. The English soccer team, which was in town for the 2026 World Cup, had just stepped off the plane when their phones went off with emergency alerts. A warning for damaging 80 mph winds from a severe thunderstorm was sent out. The players took cover in their hotel. There was an early end to the FIFA fan festival. The warnings did their job that night, but it’s harder to ignore the bigger picture: a city dealing with more storms while its monitoring system is getting worse.
The fact that the city is working hard to keep its warning system in good shape shows how much pressure local leaders are under. This week, Kansas City said it would test each of its 140 outdoor tornado sirens separately every day from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. for 24 hours. People are being told not to freak out if they hear a siren that isn’t part of the normal monthly test schedule. As the city says, it’s for upkeep. Everyday. A city checking each siren one by one to make sure it still works is a bit of a metaphor at a time when the data that sends those warnings is becoming less reliable.
It’s important to remember what tornado sirens are supposed to do. These are tools for people to use outside, in parks, on the street, and in other open areas. These things aren’t meant to be heard inside of homes. The National Weather Service has said over and over that people need to use a trusted weather app, NOAA weather radio alerts, or their phone as their main indoor warning system. While that is good advice, it also quietly points to a system where no single layer is enough by itself. Everything has to work together: the sirens, the balloons, the staff, and the apps.
As I watch all of this, I get the impression that the central US weather warning system is being pushed beyond its limits. Forecasters are skilled, dedicated, and put in a lot of work. There’s no doubt about that. It’s not so clear how long technical know-how can make up for data you never got because the balloon didn’t go up at 3 a.m. For people in Kansas City and the surrounding area, that’s not just a vague policy issue. That makes the difference between a warning and a silence they didn’t expect.
