Ray Wolf 🇨🇭🇨🇦 🇩🇰 🇬🇱

raywolf.bsky. social Retired NWS SOO, meteorologist/climatologist, Master Gardener/Conservationist, Cyclones, Chicago sports, classic movies, trains, food.

[Ray Wolf 🇨🇭🇨🇦 🇩🇰 🇬🇱 @raywolf3rd]

From last summer in eastern Iowa USA. #DaisyDay @dale_dixon @TexanInOz

[Ray Wolf 🇨🇭🇨🇦 🇩🇰 🇬🇱 @raywolf3rd]

Our tax dollars hard at work. 🙄

[FireFighterDev @fire_starter457]

Paying companies not to build windmill farms while paying coal companies because they can't remain profitable is just one example of how this country is being set back decades by this regime.

[Gianl1974 @Gianl1974]

Under Trump, the Forest Service is gutting labs that cost ONE DOLLAR in rent so they can cram scientists into a Fort Collins office that costs taxpayers a million a year.

As reported by NPR, Trump's 2027 budget zeroes out Forest Service research entirely. Three hundred and nine million dollars, gone. Fifty-seven of the agency's seventy-seven research stations are on the chopping block.

These are the forests generations of Americans have hiked, hunted, camped, and prayed in. Sacred ground for almost anyone who's ever stepped outside in this country.

And the "efficiency" pitch? A scam.

The research station in Hilo, Hawaii sits on 30,000 acres the federal government rents for a one-time fee of ONE DOLLAR, locked in until 2067. The Michigan Tech lease? One dollar paid in 1963, free ever since. Another site costs the agency $600 a month for two rooms.

The destination they want everyone shipped to in Fort Collins runs taxpayers a million a year.

Read that again. They're closing dollar leases to expand a million-dollar lease.
Scientists in Baltimore have spent years planting white oak saplings that need three decades to mature. You can't FedEx a forest to Colorado. You can't manage a Hawaiian ecosystem from a cubicle in Utah.

Researchers told NPR they'll quit before they relocate. Which is the point.

Meanwhile, Trump has openly pledged to ramp up logging on federal land. Gut the scientists who document the damage, and there's nobody left to sound the alarm when ancient forests get clear-cut for profit.

These are the people who tell us when wildfire season turns deadly. Who track invasive beetles eating through pine. Who teach cities how to recycle dead trees instead of dumping them in landfills.

You don't dismantle the world's largest forestry research network because you're worried about a maintenance bill. You dismantle it because somebody plans to take a chainsaw to what the public owns and doesn't want a paper trail.

The forests don't belong to Tom Schultz. They don't belong to Trump. They belong to every American who has ever stood quiet under a hundred-year-old tree and understood, for one second, that some things are not for sale.

Defend them now, or explain it to your grandkids later.

[Ray Wolf 🇨🇭🇨🇦 🇩🇰 🇬🇱 @raywolf3rd]

@PaulRoundy1 @HurricaneAddict The problem is farmers are too efficient at a time when the current political regime is destroying foreign markets and the ability of farmers to compete on a global scale. It’s a rigged system with corporate monopolies on one side and capricious government policies on the other.

[Ray Wolf 🇨🇭🇨🇦 🇩🇰 🇬🇱 @raywolf3rd]

@GiGi_UFO @Chicago_History There are lots of good food options in that neighborhood.

[Ray Wolf 🇨🇭🇨🇦 🇩🇰 🇬🇱 @raywolf3rd]

@Chicago_History Perry’s in Park Ridge without question.

[Ray Wolf 🇨🇭🇨🇦 🇩🇰 🇬🇱 @raywolf3rd]

@PaulRoundy1 @HurricaneAddict Having fertilizer already in place is one thing. Being able to afford it and make even a small profit is another. Global ag corporations which are near monopolies are choking off rural America except for a select few producers. I’m living in the middle of it watching it happen.

[Ray Wolf 🇨🇭🇨🇦 🇩🇰 🇬🇱 @raywolf3rd]

@toottootchoo @BohannanIowa Why are American businesses outsourcing jobs to Mexico under an administration that purports to want to keep jobs in the US.

[Dan Osborn @osbornforne]

Four companies control most of the fertilizer market in America.

They own the mines. They own the processing plants. They control the distribution network. No competition can get in.

Fertilizer prices up 150% since 2020. Farm bankruptcies up 46%. The U.S. lost 94,000 farms between 2021 and 2025.

This isn't the free market. It's a cartel.

Last week the FTC launched a historic investigation. Farmers from 18 states showed up in Texas to demand action. And Nebraska should be leading that fight.

During the worst fertilizer price crisis in a generation, Pete Ricketts was governor of one of the top agricultural states in the country and did absolutely nothing to protect Nebraska farmers from price gouging.

And if that wasn't bad enough, Ricketts has taken PAC money from the very fertilizer companies gouging Nebraska farmers! That money buys silence. And silence is exactly what Nebraska farmers have been getting.

Ricketts stands with the fertilizer monopolies. I stand with farmers.

[Ray Wolf 🇨🇭🇨🇦 🇩🇰 🇬🇱 @raywolf3rd]

Pretty much insures I won’t spend a dollar in #Bears town. Maybe the American Cancer Society can get naming rights on the new stadium. Congrats to Illinois taxpayers and condolences to Indiana taxpayers.

[Gigi @Gigi_chienergy]

The screwworm program wasn't charity, it was a $10 million fence that kept a billion-dollar problem from eating our own livestock alive. That's the thing with most USAID funding: it looks like "aid," but it's really cheap self-defense. Solve a problem there, and it never lands on our doorstep. But sure, let a bunch of guys who can't define DEI without Googling take a chainsaw to it. They didn't stop to ask, "Will this cut hurt us too?" Unless that's the point, burn it all down and call it efficiency.

As usual our inept agriculture secretary, blaming the Biden administration as usual, instead of offering a solution to the problem they created.

Texan here

A screwworm infestation is a nightmare for cattle, causing horrific wounds and economic devastation. For Texas, the situation has escalated dramatically in the last 24 hours with the first confirmed case of New World Screwworm (NWS) in over 60 years! This could have been avoided!

Infested animal can kill a cow in less than two weeks.

Treatment is extremely difficult and time-consuming, requiring the painful removal of every visible larva and deep disinfection of the wound. Ranchers no longer have much experience with this labor-intensive process, and there is currently no approved pharmaceutical treatment to make it easier.

This has triggered a massive economic threat. The USDA estimates that a widespread outbreak would drain an astonishing $1.8 billion from the Texas economy alone in livestock deaths, labor, and medication expenses.

How will this affect you? Tightening supplies will drive already high beef prices higher.

[MRCC @MidwestClimate]

I was a normal to slightly cool May by temperature standards. Precipitation was lackluster across the Upper Midwest, with the most precipitation across the Ohio River Basin.

[Nomadic Warriors for Pritzker⚔️ @Nomads4Pritzker]

So, I've worked in the beef industry. I have a fairly detailed knowledge of beef markets, the supply chain, parasites and parasiticides, etc. Suffice it to say, this is a nightmare scenario, but one we've known was coming since at least 2022.

New World Screwworm was eradicated from North and Central America in the mid-90's. The US gov't (APHIS) funded a program of screwworm drops, where they bred sterile males so that extant populations couldn't reproduce and move northwards. But in 2022 NWS jumped the Darien gap and started moving northwards once again. It's most likely that they came undetected on livestock brought alongside migrants fleeing political instability in South and Central America. Elon Musk/DOGE, of course, cut several monitoring programs that would have detected this exact scenario. The screwworm drops are still funded, but the monitoring programs are what have been cut - a stupid move if there ever was one.

A serious Central/South America policy would have worked hand-in-hand with CA/SA governments to help contain this, but we've never had a serious policy towards South America, not during the Biden years, and especially not under Trump. The USDA broke ground on a sterile screwworm facility in Texas... last month. I worry it's too little, too late.

Screwworm is so dangerous because, unlike other fly larvae, they lay eggs and feed on living flesh. So something like a small scratch (or even bug bite) can quickly becomes infested, and the larvae will burrow into the flesh, growing the wound and attracting more screwworm. They don't only parasitize cattle, but will also feed on wildlife, domestic pets, even humans. Since they have detected screwworms in domesticated cattle right now, it's likely that there is a wild reservoir as well. We can quarantine herds and pets, but we can't quarantine deer and armadillos. They will move, and so will the NWS.

Under normal circumstances, cattle are moved around - a lot. Calves will be sent to stockers through their adolescence, then shipped to feedlots for finishing. A lot of calving operations (like 70%) are small, and small-time producers don't always catch parasite infestations. Cattle moved in-state don't require a certificate of veterinary inspection, so it's easy for an infested animal to be moved without being noticed. Animals crossing state lines do need a CVI, but Texas has such an enormous cattle population (something like 13 million head) that as goes Texas, so goes the nation.

Fortunately, we have a lot of drugs that treat NWS. The FDA has issued several emergency use authorizations in the last year or so. But every input raises the price of beef, and treatment only makes a difference if producers catch an infestation early. If an infestation spreads unnoticed on a large feedlot, it can hit hard, both in terms of cattle that have to be killed, and treatments that then have to be deployed. Producers will spend days at a time running cattle through the chute, inspecting them and applying parasiticides. It costs a lot of money, which is then passed on to the consumer.

What does that mean for you? Beef is a commodity, and just because there's no NWS up here in Illinois doesn't mean that prices won't skyrocket - and they will skyrocket. US herd size is already at record lows, and this will result in culls. Consumer prices also run 18-24 months behind, which means that shocks to the supply chain now are still going to be felt by consumers in 2028.

It's hard to say if our government will be able to muster an effective response - though I don't trust our current administration, which can't even throw a 250th anniversary party, to be able to deal with an ecological issue of this magnitude. It doesn't help that our current USDA secretary is a lawyer and think-tank creature. I don't much trust the state government of Texas either. The industry has also taken the workforce of large animal veterinarians for granted - a monopoly/market power issue that I just can't get in to here.

For me, it comes back to our federal government having an incoherent policy on Central and South America. We knew what was coming, we know what's going to happen, but we cut the program meant to prevent this scenario. Instead of taking those countries seriously as partners, the government has been stupid and domineering.

Here's the kicker: this is what the industry voted for. They might scream, they might get bailed out, but all that means is that you, the consumer, are going to be paying more for beef, plus whatever bailout gets shoveled their way. Until the industry accepts that they are part of a larger system; that they cannot eternally privatize the gains and publicize the losses of beef production; that they need to consider sustainability and stewardship in the management of their operations, this is only going to keep happening. Eventually, they may find that there is very little goodwill for them among the public, and people will decide that a Brazilian ribeye tastes just as good as one from Texas.

[Ray Wolf 🇨🇭🇨🇦 🇩🇰 🇬🇱 @raywolf3rd]

@IowaGOP California Derangement Syndrome - CDS

[Ray Wolf 🇨🇭🇨🇦 🇩🇰 🇬🇱 @raywolf3rd]

@HippyGranny2 @USDA @POTUS @WhiteHouse That’s screw worming over Americans. 🤣

[Miles Taylor @MilesTaylorUSA]

Yesterday Donald Trump tripled the size of his personal political army inside the government. Illegally. And almost no one noticed.

Here's what happened:

He signed an order converting ~8,000 of the most senior career officials in government into employees he can fire for any reason, or no reason at all.

These aren't rando's. They're the directors, chiefs of staff, and the people who write the rules or decide who gets federal money, i.e. the lieutenants right below his political appointees.

Until yesterday, they answered to the law. Now they answer to him.

A president normally gets ~4,000 political appointees. People he can bring into government and fire at will. I was one of them at DHS. You serve at his pleasure, full stop -- so if you're gonna speak truth to power, you're prepared to quit (or get fired if he doesn't like it).

The rest of the federal government is PROTECTED from firing if they tell the truth.

But Trump just stripped those protections. Adding 8,000 more people to his personal army. Overnight. Without asking Congress.

With the stroke of a pen, those people now serve at the pleasure of the president. They're "his" people, whether they like it or not.

And the chilling effect is real. An official who can be fired this afternoon for "subversion of presidential directives" (the order's own words) doesn't need to be hand-picked to know what's expected of him or her.

The threat does all the work.

By the way, this order is illegal. The law only lets Trump reclassify jobs when "necessary" in exceptional circumstances. And this blows an 8,000-person hole in the merit hiring / firing system created by Congress.

Without permission, Trump has created a whole new category of stormtroopers inside the Executive Branch.

If this doesn't get challenged in court, you're going to see the U.S. government become a very different place.

Here's the full story: https://t.co/mJzrvzhxGR

[Ray Wolf 🇨🇭🇨🇦 🇩🇰 🇬🇱 @raywolf3rd]

@SenSanders They don’t care about them after they’re born.

[Ray Wolf 🇨🇭🇨🇦 🇩🇰 🇬🇱 @raywolf3rd]

So much winning I can’t f¥€£ing stand it.

[The Lincoln Project @ProjectLincoln]

The Trump administration has been telling you they had screwworm under control for months. Now, it's here.

What happened? Trump and DOGE slashed funding for screwworm monitoring programs.

And the entire GOP let them. Thank them for today's new hell they unleashed on you.

[Ray Wolf 🇨🇭🇨🇦 🇩🇰 🇬🇱 @raywolf3rd]

Try doing a hand analysis on this data set. What a joke.

[Matthew Cappucci @MatthewCappucci]

The lack of morning weather balloons launched across the western and central U.S. is having a real, tangible impact on degrading forecast quality.

We can't look at weather balloon data that doesn't exist. We can't pump nonexistent data into models. We can't rely as heavily on models that don't "know" what's happening above our heads.

Today's severe weather forecast is less certain because we don't have weather balloon data to confirm the strength of jet stream winds aloft.

This is extremely frustrating, and is the result of logistical, organizational, political and budgetary decisions.

[Matthew Cappucci @MatthewCappucci]

The lack of morning weather balloons launched across the western and central U.S. is having a real, tangible impact on degrading forecast quality.

We can't look at weather balloon data that doesn't exist. We can't pump nonexistent data into models. We can't rely as heavily on models that don't "know" what's happening above our heads.

Today's severe weather forecast is less certain because we don't have weather balloon data to confirm the strength of jet stream winds aloft.

This is extremely frustrating, and is the result of logistical, organizational, political and budgetary decisions.

[Greta Berlin @Truegreta]

I stood at this pool, at both monuments and saw both reflections…
He’s a God damn idiot, as are the fools that support him. The “Reflection Pool” wasn’t designed by American architect Henry Bacon a hundred years ago to look like a swimming pool. It’s designed to have a darkened characteristics that has reflective qualities to reflect the monuments.
That way, the Washington Monument is reflective to you when at the Lincoln Memorial, and when at the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial is reflective to you.
It’s designed to enhance the grandeur of monuments, create an illusion of reflection, and inclusion of expansive space of unity.
He’s a tacky vulgar person that vulgarizes everything he touches. America isn’t becoming great, it’s becoming vulgar.

Credit - Mathew Reed