Tomorrow.io – Lawmakers Eye AI Weather Tracking to Advance Flood, Hurricane Forecasting

One of the companies was Tomorrow.io, which is helping agricultural suppliers reroute shipments and assist utility providers in protecting the power grid, for example. Thomas Cavett, vice president of government affairs and strategy, said the company’s goal “is to equip governments, industries and individuals with advanced weather intelligence to make faster, more informed decisions in the face of weather-driven challenges.”

Lawmakers pointed to the devastating flash floods in Kerr County, Texas on July 4 as a stark reminder of the need for accurate and timely weather forecasting. At least 134 people died when the Guadalupe River in Texas rose more than 25 feet in less than an hour, with many more individuals still missing. A few days later, at least three people died following flash floods at the Ruidoso River in New Mexico.

Democratic representatives at the hearing flagged worries over climate and weather data availability in the U.S. following the slew of staff cuts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under the Trump administration.

At the hearing, Gabe Amo (D-RI) said the Trump administration “is taking a sledgehammer” to the government’s weather data collection potential, leaving the country “flying blind into the eye of the storm.”

“The impact is going to be long-term,” said Waleed Abdalati, the director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences—a research institute between NOAA and the University of Colorado Boulder—speaking about the government cuts. “We’re losing talent, the talent that remains is nervous, the best ones have other opportunities, and so there’s going to be a brain drain.”

But lawmakers hope that new technology developments can help the government, companies and individuals better grapple with the minutiae of shifting weather patterns.

“Emerging technologies are transforming how we collect and interpret weather data, and that is a good thing,” said Deborah Ross (D-NC). “From AI-powered models and high resolution satellites, to drone-based atmospheric sensing, we can now equip our outstanding forecasters at the National Weather Service with improved tools to predict weather patterns with increasing precision—and that’s happening in the private sector as well.”

Meanwhile, companies are clamoring for more weather data as extreme weather events rock parts of the U.S., posing risks to their operations, employees, customers and profits.

A range of businesses are seeking more details on weather conditions, from those operating construction sites to amusement parks, according to a brief for the hearing. A report from professional services firm Marsh last year said 83% of organizations it surveyed were assessing future climate risks to their business, and 50% navigated an extreme weather event in the past few years.

“For decades, weather forecasting has meant massive, governmental supercomputers. I’m here to tell you that this paradigm has shifted,” said Jayesh Kumar Gupta, CEO of Silurian AI, which gathers weather data using large-scale artificial intelligence. “The same AI revolution that transformed how we understand language, is now transforming weather modeling.”

Earlier this year, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting launched the first openaccess weather prediction model driven by machine learning.

Tech companies including Microsoft are developing AI forecasting models; Microsoft’s Aurora can predict a range of weather patterns from temperature to pollution. A study published in Nature says Aurora’s AI gathers more accurate forecasts at a much faster—and cheaper—rate than government agencies.

Cavett emphasized the burgeoning AI-driven weather industry isn’t out to make government weather tracking redundant.

“The goal is not to replace government capabilities, but to complement and strengthen them,” he said.