Red state town blindsided by tornado blames Trump cuts for blown forecast

Emergency managers in central Kansas say a tornado that tore through their communities on April 13 caught them off guard for one reason: the forecast said clear skies, and they blame staffing cuts under President Donald Trump for gutting the data behind it, according to Politico.

"The issue is the forecast," said Thomas Winter, emergency manager for Franklin County. "There was a zero percent chance of thunderstorms — and that forecast comes from the storm prediction center out of Oklahoma."

Meteorologists point to reductions carried out by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, which thinned the ranks at National Weather Service offices that launch weather balloons twice daily. Those balloons feed the models used for severe-storm forecasts, and understaffed western offices have delayed or dropped the morning launches, creating data holes. Ahead of the April 13 twister, NOAA data showed no balloon launches upstream of eastern Kansas.

Alan Gerard, a former NOAA severe-storms lab director, said going from "no risk area defined" to "you have strong tornadoes" is highly unusual.

NOAA rejected the idea that its balloon operations have compromised forecasts, saying it has found no degradation. The agency noted the Storm Prediction Center flagged severe-weather potential as early as April 10, and that weak, short-lived tornadoes are notoriously hard to predict.

The concerns follow a year of scrutiny after DOGE's cuts, including the deadly July 2025 Texas floods that killed more than 100 people, among them children at a summer camp, and reporting that DOGE pushed out a "vital" weather employee beforehand.

Critics have long warned that "DOGE has consequences" for public safety.