Now might be a good time for Republicans to rethink their proposal to cut 30% from the existing budget of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – the agency responsible for tracking hurricanes.
NOAA says the Republican cuts will destroy its ability to warn of hurricanes five or 10 days out. That is crucial lead time to carry out the preparations and evacuations we have been seeing this weekend with Hurricane Irene.
Mississippi floods, the mid-Atlantic tornados, south-western wildfires and record heatwaves made 2011 a year of extreme weather events well before Irene hit.
But Republicans in the House of Representatives insist NOAA is a waste of money.
The $1.2bn (£730m) of cuts will force NOAA to delay replacing ageing satellites – meaning that it could go for up to 18 months without an eye in the sky at some time in the next five years.
"Whether the gap is longer than that depends on whether we get the money in the next budget," Jane Lubchenco, the head of NOAA, told an audience in Denver earlier this month.
