Sponsors (2)
The bill would substantially improve localized weather and flood forecasting and emergency response capacity—benefiting public safety, infrastructure resilience, and planning—but requires new federal and local investments and support, and risks uneven access, added costs, privacy challenges, and potential public confusion over probabilistic forecasts.
Coastal, urban, and rural communities (homeowners, renters, local and state governments) will receive improved, localized and probabilistic forecasts for storm surge, high-tide flooding, heat, rainfall, and storms, enabling earlier warnings and better preparation that reduce loss of life and property.
Local, state, and federal emergency operations centers, FEMA, and emergency managers will gain localized decision-support tools and probabilistic flood estimates that improve evacuation planning, resource allocation, and on-the-ground response.
Communities in under-observed areas (including urban heat islands and rural regions) will get expanded observing systems and more weather observations (e.g., mesonets, urban heat mapping), improving forecast accuracy for heat, rainfall, and storms.
Taxpayers and federal budgets will face increased costs because implementing advanced sensors, observing systems, pilots, and modeling improvements requires new federal spending or reallocation of NOAA/FEMA resources.
Local governments, tribal authorities, and infrastructure owners (utilities, transportation operators) will incur training, integration, operation, and maintenance costs and may lack the technical capacity to effectively adopt and use sophisticated probabilistic guidance without sustained support.
Rural and low-income communities risk receiving fewer benefits or being unable to sustain new observing networks and pilots, producing uneven outcomes and exacerbating equity gaps in weather and flood protection.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Requires NOAA to set up a coastal flooding and storm surge forecast improvement program to expand observations, improve models, and deliver local decision-support and pilot projects.
Creates a NOAA-led program to improve forecasts, warnings, and decision-support for coastal flooding, high-tide flooding, and storm surge. The program will boost observations, improve models and probabilistic forecasts, coordinate with FEMA and USGS, and support pilot projects, workforce training, and local emergency operations centers. Requires NOAA to produce a program plan within 180 days, evaluate new observation and modeling approaches, submit an annual proposed budget to Congress, and lead an interagency effort to run pilots that accelerate use of localized weather data (including mesonet efforts) for infrastructure and emergency management decisions.
Introduced June 5, 2025 by Thomas Kean · Last progress June 5, 2025