As Republicans chop away at the foundations of NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), it’s easy to forget the achievements that have followed since the days when hurricanes could take an entire city by surprise.
John Edward Weems interviewed survivors, and studied written accounts and records to create the definitive account of the 1900 catastrophe that struck Galveston, Texas. Excluding pandemics, the monster hurricane that washed over the island city was the worst natural disaster in US history. It is a horrifying narrative in which somewhere between six and twelve thousand people were killed.
And, it more or less took the residents of Galveston completely by surprise.
The book was written in 1957, thirteen years before Richard Nixon signed NOAA into existence as part of a bipartisan recognition that we would all benefit by understanding our planet and taking care of it.
Storm prediction isn’t the only benefit of NOAA: we were just getting better at long-range drought prediction, rainfall estimates, spotting atmospheric rivers before they become disasters, fishery management, reef protection, animal migration, and making sense of climate change and ozone recovery.
That last part – climate change – is the reason Project 2025 singles out NOAA for budgetary destruction. A more penny-wise and pound-foolish policy would be difficult to conceive.
- A Weekend in September, Texas A&M 1957 University Press by John Edward Weems. The book focuses on the human experience and destruction wrought by the hurricane. ISBN 0-89096-390-8
- For a more technical explanation of the weather analysis at the time, and how oceanic physical science has developed, see the relevant chapter in The Power Of The Sea, by Bruce Parker.
- There are other agencies whose purpose is to defend human lives against different disasters, like pandemics. As I write, they are on the chopping block as well.
georgewiman 