DATE: Friday, April 18, 1997                TAG: 9704180002

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B10  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 

                                            LENGTH:   51 lines

DANGEROUS CUT FORECAST CALLS FOR MORE HURRICANES BUT SMALLER WEATHER-SERVICE STAFF. IT'S CLEAR WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE.

A tale is told of a congressman who favored cuts in the National Weather Service because, he explained, people don't need it; they get their weather forecasts from TV.

The congressman obviously didn't understand that TV gets weather data from the national service.

Weather forecasting - especially of violent weather - is an invaluable service the federal government provides. It's not a job anyone else can do. It can't be privatized, because there's no profit in it. States can't do it individually. It's an obvious federal responsibility.

With ever more millions of Americans crowding the Eastern Seaboard and heading for the Sun Belt, a single hurricane can cause damage totaling $1 billion or more.

In a classic penny-wise and pound-foolish move, Congress provided $27.5 million less to the National Weather Service this year than last.

To make ends meet, weather-service officials plan to cut up to 200 jobs. They insist, however, that public safety will not be affected.

Jim Talbot, deputy coordinator of emergency services for Norfolk, is far less optimistic. ``I see this as a potentially life-threatening cut,'' he said. ``I would say we use the weather service more than any other branch of the government.''

As staff writers Mason Peters and Steve Stone recently reported, staff cutbacks are planned for the tornado-tracking center in Oklahoma and the National Hurricane Center in Miami, where some shifts will be handled by a single meteorologist. Are storms supposed to be less active at certain hours of the day?

This bad news comes as the nation's leading hurricane forecaster, Colorado State University Professor William M. Gray, predicts another active hurricane season. His research team foresees 11 named tropical storms forming in the Atlantic, Caribbean or Gulf of Mexico, of which seven will become hurricanes. Three of those, the team predicts, will intensify into major hurricanes, with winds of 111 mph or more.

We apparently are entering a period of greater, not lesser, hurricane activity. So the timing of the National Weather Service budget cut was awful. The ultimate cost of the staff reductions could be huge.

Although Hampton Roads has been dodging hurricanes for many years, one eventually will find us. ``Sooner or later,'' said Mark Marchbank, Virginia Beach director of emergency services, ``it's going to come.'' As it approaches, we will need all the weather information we can get - not less than before.

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