Eric Sorensen is the only meteorologist serving in Congress. The former television weatherman is looking to use that experience to help shape federal policy to help keep Americans safe from weather disasters.
For about two decades, Sorensen advised his television viewers when to get to the basement when a tornado was coming or when to get off the icy roads.
“My job today is very much — I don’t want to say it’s the same — my job is so similar to what happened before, because people could trust me for helping them make good decisions,” Sorensen said in a call with reporters.
Sorensen is a Democrat from Moline who is in his second term in Washington. He represents portions of Bloomington-Normal, Peoria and much of Central and Northwest Illinois.
Sorensen said he'd like to see the federal government take a more proactive role in more accurately forecasting the weather and warning the public when precautions are necessary. He said the federal government is usually associated with weather disasters after the fact, such as the floods in Texas in July of last year when more than 100 people were killed.
“When we say all of those young people just get wiped away. We didn’t get to know those children, but also the first thing that happened after that disaster that really bugged me was the fact that people lost their life and now we are not going to do anything about it,” he said.
Sorensen found a Republican colleague, U.S. Rep. Mike Flood of Nebraska — another former broadcaster — to help form the Weather Enterprise Caucus. It's a group of lawmakers who will assess weather forecasting and research, and examine the weather's impact on the economy, national security and our general safety. Sorensen said a more proactive federal government is necessary as the number of meteorologists decreases during a time of media consolidation and more people rely mostly on weather apps to keep them informed and safe.
“The thing that that thing can’t do is explain how the weather works,” he said holding up his phone. “And so my job was to explain why things happened a certain way, to educate people so that people understood enough about the weather.”
Sorensen said he also worries about the future of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA] after the Trump administration's cuts to it and the National Weather Service. For example, Sorensen said when Elon Musk's DOGE budget-cutting enterprise fired National Weather Service electricians, it turned hours-long Doppler radar outages intro weeks long outages.
“We were losing the ability to see tornadoes because the equipment was failing. If we don’t have the funding appropriated through Congress, then we are not going to have weather balloons that are going up to give us the three-dimensional look at what’s going on in the weather,” Sorensen said.
Sorensen said he wants to see the U.S. weather enterprise get better at assessing risk. He said that will require better technology. NWS is in the midst of upgrading its old Doppler radar systems which date back to the 1980s. He said better information going in Congress will help make better assessments of how money can be spent to build resiliency when it comes to floods, tornadoes and other disasters.
“Are we making sure from a policy perspective that we are designing roadways that are going to withstand these floods,” he said. “It’s not just education, it’s making sure the policy is there. Are we driving home the federal tax dollars to rebuild the infrastructure to keep people safe?”
Sorensen has sponsored three weather related proposals during this term in Congress. One was to reverse staff cuts at the National Weather Service. Another would have studied the how to improve weather forecasting in rural America in light of the federal cuts to NOAA. Most recently, Sorensen proposed a bill to set up an independent review board to investigate major weather-related disasters.
None has gotten a hearing so far.
Sorensen said the weather is not a partisan issue.
“When you look at where most of the severe weather occurs in this nation, that’s red states,” he said. “I don’t want to say that’s what’s easier to make this bipartisan. That’s why it was bipartisan from the start.”
Sorensen said if the weather caucus can save one life, it will be worth it.
