Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is pushing for more money to help meteorologists better forecast storms like the tornados that ravaged Upstate New York earlier this month.
Schumer wants to inject $30 million into the nation's Mesonet System which tracks storms on a hyper-local level. He said better information from centers in most areas of New York State, enables forecasters to give communities better early warning for weather emergencies, like the record number of tornadoes that swept through upstate in July.
"All the data from every one of these centers, including the ones here in Onondaga County, is sent to an operations center in Albany that works in cooperation with ESF here in Syracuse," Schumer said. "And they take all that information and they put it all together, and then they use all kinds of computers and other programs that figure out a much better forecast of weather than we've had in the past."
The funds if approved, would build more of these Mesonet Centers, and allow them technology to see deeper into storms. One of those tornados ravaged Rome, New York. Schumer expects final damage figures to be in the tens of millions. He figures it’ll take a while to get an accurate figure of damages.
"You see, we want to get the exact accurate count because the higher the count, the more money we get," Schumer said. "So we're not relaxing, but we're not rushing it. We want to find every bit of damage and you have to go to all the homes and all the businesses."
Schumer said climate change is creating conditions for more extreme weather makes investment in the nation’s weather observation system more important.
