Weather Balloons Seen at Risk of Being Grounded by U.S. Cuts

The U.S. National Weather Service may freeze hiring and reduce the number of balloons that soar miles high in the sky to collect data used for forecasts, a union official said.

“Those weather balloons are the main drivers they use to get models that tell you, for example, there’s a pretty big snowstorm that’s going to be in Washington,” Dan Sobien, president of the National Weather Service Employees Organization, said yesterday. “That would be a very devastating thing to cut.”