What happens when the Weather Satellites stop working?

didn't pray enough.

Seriously, this could impact a lot of people in all regions of the country. The best chance of survival in extreme weather is knowing what is headed your way and when it's will arrive.

http://www.spacenews.com/article/civil-space/35463weather-satellite-glitch-prompts-noaa-to-activate-on-orbit-spare#.UaIulZyyCXl
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One of two primary satellites used by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to track severe weather in the United States has been knocked out of service, prompting the agency to activate a spare satellite to maintain East Coast coverage.

According to status updates posted on NOAA’s website, service from the Geostationary-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES)-13 suffered an outage of its two main instruments May 22. The Boeing-built spacecraft was launched in May 2006 into a storage orbit and was activated in April 2010.

With GOES-13 out of commission, East Coast coverage is now being provided by the newly activated GOES-14 satellite, which was launched into a storage orbit in June 2009, the latest status update, issued May 23, said.

NOAA normally maintains two operational GOES satellites, overlooking the East and West coasts of the U.S. mainland. Each satellite has an imager, which monitors storms and cloud coverage, and a sounder, which takes vertical profiles of atmospheric temperature and humidity.

But we still need better more secure coverage.

but the first article was scary

without satellites, I'm sure we could handle a disruption.

What an astoundingly stupid thing to say. Really. Hats off to you.

Do you really want to go back to those days?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1900_Galveston_hurricane

The Hurricane of 1900 made landfall on September 8, 1900, in the city of Galveston, Texas, in the United States.[1] It had estimated winds of 145 miles per hour (233 km/h) at landfall, making it a Category 4 storm on the Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Scale.[2] It was the deadliest hurricane in US history, and the second costliest hurricane in U.S. history based on the dollar's 2005 value (to compare costs with those of Hurricane Katrina and others).

The hurricane caused great loss of life with the estimated death toll between 6,000 and 12,000 individuals;[3] the number most cited in official reports is 8,000, giving the storm the third-highest number of deaths or injuries of any Atlantic hurricane, after the Great Hurricane of 1780 and 1998's Hurricane Mitch.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Hurricane_of_1780

The Great Hurricane of 1780, also known as Huracán San Calixto, the Great Hurricane of the Antilles, and the 1780 Disaster,[1][2] is probably the deadliest Atlantic hurricane on record. Between 20,000 and 22,000 people died when the storm passed through the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean starting on October 10 and ending on October 16.[3] Specifics on the hurricane's track and strength are unknown since the official Atlantic hurricane database only goes back to 1851.[4]

The hurricane struck Barbados with winds possibly exceeding 320 km/h (200 mph), before moving past Martinique, Saint Lucia, and Sint Eustatius; thousands of deaths were reported on the islands. Coming in the midst of the American Revolution, the storm caused heavy losses to British and French fleets contesting for control of the area. The hurricane later passed near Puerto Rico and over the eastern portion of Hispaniola (today's Dominican Republic). There, it caused heavy damage near the coastlines. It ultimately turned to the northeast before being last observed on October 20 southeast of Cape Race, Newfoundland.

The death toll from the Great Hurricane alone exceeds that of any other entire decade of Atlantic hurricanes. Estimates are marginally higher than for Hurricane Mitch, the second-deadliest Atlantic storm, for which figures are likely more accurate. The hurricane was part of the disastrous 1780 Atlantic hurricane season, with two other deadly storms occurring in the month of October.[3]

But really, how the hell did you do that so fast?

but the world won't end if satellites stopped working.

and certainly for me, since I'm not in a hurricane or tornado area, and prepare automatically for blizzards.

But for those who live in severe storm areas, yeah, without warning the world may well end for them. For example, just last week, the world didn't end for thousands of residents of Moore because they had sufficient warning to go to ground or get out before they could see the tornado bearing down on them.

Unfreakingbelievable

If by 'handling' it, thousands could die because of insufficient warning, then, yeah, we'll 'handle' it alright. See? Those bubonic plagues weren't any big deal either, seeing that Europe bounced back after losing a full third of the population after successive waves of the disease; they 'handled' it.

weather forecasts were quite erratic.

Mankind wouldn't die off, but storm casualties would be expected to rise with less warnings and less time to take shelter/evacuate.

with more and more people living in large population centers, the chances of thousands of people being killed during a catastrophic storm have greatly increased.

This will not be the last of how we survive with out it.

for the human race.

I think you make an interesting point. Let's hope it is not to our peril, this kind of evolution.

I understand the need for them, but not the urgency that leads people to scream "but we'll die!!!"

And maybe this time the EU can pick up some of the tab? Wouldn't that be nice...

I was thinking the exact same thing.

If you know that a hurricane is coming days from now, you can evacuate a city.
If you know that a hurricane is coming hours from now, you can't.

Satellites turn that "hours" into "days".

You can use an airplane when you know where the storm already is.

You can't use an airplane when you don't. There's literally millions of square miles of ocean to cover.

But this is just too important to screw around with.

Get them fixed/replaced. No excuses, no politics. Do it. Now.

Because the satellites will also provide insight into the effects of global warming, rethugs will not allow
funding. Also, they like to de-fund these programs and then when disaster happens, proclaim that
government does not work.

We can thank the anti-science crowd for this.

if Congress might have some things other than Bengazi and taxing Appple and teabaggery to look at.

From the link:

<...>
"The government report blames the problem on more than a decade of chronic program mismanagement and cost overruns.

The report specifically blames the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which helps operate the satellites with other government agencies."
<...>

china will share theirs.

They are also used to convey an immense amount of data from ground based sensors to monitor in near real time water levels and stream flows of virtually every body of water in the hemisphere, along with soil temp and moisture and other environmental data.

The hurricane images are something everyone appreciates, but there is a lot more going on with NOAA satellites that is of tremendous environmental and economic importance as well.

my mom and I just had this conversation after the OK tornado... "What did the Native Americans do?" we thought...hos did they know if a storm was coming...you know they had to have a way because they were much more in sync with nature. and then...how did they shelter? did they have underground places or did they just sit in their teepees and wait to be sucked up by the sky gods?


I wonder sometimes at how vulnerable we truly are as a species...take away our technology and we are still just neanderthals huddled around the fire...

http://www.almanac.com/weather