{"id":207917,"date":"2026-04-16T22:46:26","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T22:46:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/surprise-tornadoes-in-kansas-prompt-concerns-about-changes-at-the-national-weather-service-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T22:46:26","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T22:46:26","slug":"surprise-tornadoes-in-kansas-prompt-concerns-about-changes-at-the-national-weather-service-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/surprise-tornadoes-in-kansas-prompt-concerns-about-changes-at-the-national-weather-service-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Surprise tornadoes in Kansas prompt concerns about changes at the National Weather Service – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

news Alerts
There are no new alerts at this time
A tornado outbreak<\/a> near Kansas City, Kansas, on Monday night came as a surprise.
Subscribe to read this story ad-free
Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.
At least three injuries were reported after at least five tornadoes developed in areas southwest of the city. Several homes were damaged, trees were downed and recreational vehicles were overturned.
But in its Monday afternoon outlook<\/a>, the National Weather Service\u2019s Storm Prediction Center, which forecasts severe thunderstorms and tornadoes, did not anticipate a tornado threat for the Kansas City area. The disconnect has prompted concerns among some outside meteorologists that ongoing changes to staffing and weather balloon releases at the agency might be leaving forecasters in the dark about threats.
Many forecasting offices in the Great Plains did not launch weather balloons at 7 a.m. Monday, as they have for decades, and instead they released the balloons at noon \u2014 a change that several meteorologists think was made because of staffing issues.
\u201cWe are missing data at the normal times,\u201d said Chris Vagasky, a meteorologist and research manager at the Wisconsin Environmental Mesonet, a statewide network of weather monitoring stations. He added that the staggered balloon launches Monday left a \u201cbig area over the southern Plains in the central United States without that weather balloon data, which might have caused the models to not forecast the day\u2019s activity as well as it could have.\u201d
The strongest tornado in the Kansas City area Monday was rated EF2<\/a>, according to the enhanced Fujita scale, which rates tornadoes by wind speed and destruction. That tornado\u2019s wind speeds reached about 125 mph, according to preliminary damage reports.
Forecast models did not show the threat of tornadoes until the risk was on the doorstep. The weather service issued watches at about 6:35 p.m.<\/a>, about half an hour before the first tornado. Local forecasting offices in Topeka, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri, sent out several warnings<\/a> later. (A tornado watch means conditions are ripe for tornadoes to form; a tornado warning means a twister has been spotted on radar or is expected<\/a> to form.)
Notice ahead of a possible tornado is critical to give people time to take shelter. Some local governments also sound tornado sirens to alert residents when forecasters issue tornado warnings. Ideally, a watch is issued several hours before an event and then a warning goes out when a tornado is imminent. Research suggests tornado warnings typically go out about 15 minutes<\/a> in advance.
Erica Grow Cei, a spokesperson for the weather service, said the changing cadence of weather balloons has not affected forecasts.
\u201cNOAA\u2019s weather model performance has not been impacted by any changes to the schedule of our twice-daily radiosonde (weather balloon) launches,\u201d she said in a statement. \u201cNOAA\u2019s Environmental Modeling Center regularly evaluates the performance of the Agency\u2019s weather models and publishes its findings on the EMC\u2019s website. NOAA\u2019s weather model performance shows no evidence of degradation.\u201d
Weather balloons, which are filled with hydrogen or helium, carry small instruments called radiosondes into the upper atmosphere to measure temperature, humidity and wind speed and transmit data back to the ground. Because storms generally track from west to east in the U.S., the balloons often provide key information about what conditions might be expected downwind in the hours and days after they fly.
For decades, the weather service released weather balloons at a clockworklike cadence<\/a> at more than 100 sites across the country, as well as over the Pacific and the Caribbean. But the Trump administration cut the agency deeply last year through buyouts and by firing probationary workers, leaving some forecasting offices short-staffed and scrambling to fill key roles<\/a>. As a result, the agency halted balloon launches at some locations and is delaying them elsewhere.
Alan Gerard, a meteorologist who retired last year as the director of analysis and understanding at NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory, said he thinks the balloon release schedule was changed because of continuing staffing issues.
\u201cThey\u2019ve been deferring them to the day shift \u2014 midday \u2014 for when they have more staff,\u201d he said.
Gerard said the weather service should study the issue<\/a>: \u201cIt\u2019s like we\u2019re conducting a real-time experiment without any way to evaluate what the impacts of it are.\u201d
He added that some forecasting models are timed to run in the morning \u2014 just after 7 a.m. local time. But Monday, balloon data from the central Plains did not come in until after those morning models had run, so it was not factored in.
\u201cYou\u2019re missing data from the Four Corners region, from the northern Plains, from part of the central Plains, and that\u2019s where the storms were developing,\u201d Vagasky said.
The unexpected tornadoes in Kansas followed a similar, much-scrutinized event in Michigan<\/a> last month, when a tornado watch was not issued for southern Michigan and four people died. Weather service offices did issue warnings when tornadoes were imminent, however.
Democratic Sens. Gary Peters and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan sent a letter asking National Weather Service Director Ken Graham<\/a> why a watch was not issued, whether short staffing played a role and how the agency planned to improve tornado alerts. An NWS spokesperson said the agency had briefed staff in both Senators\u2019 offices and that a written response was in process.
Although the weather service has taken steps to bolster its ranks since the staffing shortages began, outside meteorologists said effects linger.
\u201cIt was something that was not going to be solved overnight, and I still don\u2019t think it is solved, given what we\u2019re seeing with the balloons,\u201d Vagasky said. \u201cI\u2019m concerned with any severe weather day \u2026 and the real heart of tornado season is late April and into May.\u201d
Forecasters at the weather service office in Kansas City said they viewed the atmosphere Monday as \u201cvolatile\u201d and were aware that storms could grow severe if they formed. But the meteorologists thought storms had only a low chance of developing.
\u201cThere was a pretty strong possibility there would be no showers or thunderstorms at all \u2014 you\u2019d have a primed environment where nothing ever develops or nothing happens,\u201d said Brad Temeyer, a meteorologist in the Kansas City office. \u201cIt was a low-probability event of it occurring, but given that it did occur, it had high impact.\u201d
Temeyer said the agency surveyed the tornado damage Tuesday.
\u201cWe didn\u2019t have any significant injuries or fatalities, and in going out and doing the storm surveys today, everybody said they were prepared for potential tornadoes and took shelter once those warnings were in effect,\u201d he said.
Brian LaMarre, a weather consultant who was the meteorologist-in-charge at the weather service\u2019s weather forecasting station in Tampa Bay, Florida, until last April, said he reviewed Monday\u2019s forecasting models before and after the later-than-usual release of weather balloons.
In the morning, none of the models identified a thunderstorm risk for the area southwest of Kansas City, he said. However, once the models incorporated the balloon data, LaMarre said, they began to hint at clusters of thunderstorms. Further study would be needed to understand whether the shift was because of the added balloon data.
\u201cIt has to be investigated in terms of researching why did it not happen. Why did it not capture it? What was missed?\u201d he said.
More severe weather could be coming for the Midwest. The Storm Prediction Center expects a risk of severe thunderstorms into the weekend.
For the Kansas City area, Temeyer said, \u201cwe want people to remain vigilant.\u201d
Evan Bush is a science reporter for NBC News.
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeA tornado outbreak near Kansas City, Kansas, on Monday night came as a surprise.Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.At least three injuries were reported after at least five tornadoes developed in areas southwest of the city. Several homes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":207918,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-207917","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-us","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}