Every year, Chuck commits to traveling to all62 counties in New York to meet with constituents.
On August 13th, 2024, standing at Buffalo’s National Weather Service HQ, after a record-setting month of tornadoes and extreme weather ravaged Upstate NY, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer doubled down on his push to increase federal funding for the nation's weather monitoring systems and NY’s advanced regional weather early warning systems known as mesonets which help cover every single county in NY. Schumer said recent weather shows that we need to be making these investments to help keep communities like Western NY safe and prepared, especially amid new extreme proposals to dismantle and cut the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) & the National Weather Service (NWS), which would not only risk defunding the weather programs people rely on, but also critical weather data getting stuck behind a paywall.
“Everyone in Buffalo knows the power of Mother Nature whether it be from a lake effect snowstorm or the rare tornado like we saw last week. We’re seeing increasing extreme weather, and that means we need to invest in the most advanced weather tracking technology for Western NY and our national weather observation systems to keep our communities safe and prepared,” said Senator Schumer. “While some in Washington want to cut our weather programs, I am here today to say that we should be increasing funding to upgrade our nation’s weather monitoring services. Having real-time, minute-by-minute weather updates with hyper-local data like we are able to get from NY’s mesonet system and from Buffalo’s Nation Weather Service HQ is absolutely essential. As this summer of record-breaking extreme weather has shown, it is more important than ever to focus on prioritizing federal funding for the National Weather Service to ensure that our systems aren’t just running, but state-of-the-art.”