Lynn Rudmin Chong: Weather research and reporting to the public at risk

To The Daily Sun,

E-valentines were sent to relatives in Arkansas, where tornadoes regularly hit. Ah, that we love our friends and family. We appreciate they get storm warnings.

We protest Project 2025 wanting to reduce the National Weather Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to weakness, employees pressured now to resign. Elon Musk doing this dirty work at Pres. Donald Trump’s request. Musk’s satellite business gains monetary, contractual advantage if what comes to us “free” (paid for by our tax dollars, really) is weakened or gone, like a kitten without a mother. (A repair garage without trustworthy mechanics?)

Maybe readers found Erik Larson’s riveting “Isaac’s Storm,” about the Sept. 8, 1900, destruction of seaside Galveston, Texas. A monster hurricane destroyed the town and killed over 6,000 people, ocean pulsing over the town. This storm’s approach wasn’t communicated to Galveston residents. Yet, in 1889, a dam break near Johnson, Pennsylvania, flood killing 2,209 people and wrecking 1,880 businesses and homes, caused the Congress of 1890 to institute a U.S. Weather Bureau as part of the Department of Agriculture. Still a “baby” governmental agency at the time, without our instrumentation and communication technologies of now, poor Galveston just didn’t know.

Let’s not lose the good that previous, elected-by-the-people Congresses brought into being for our welfare and benefit (U.S. Department of Education another one). Let’s push our current Republican-controlled Congress to return to “of the people, by the people, for the people” proper motivation.

Lynn Rudmin Chong

Sanbornton