Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American ’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman.

About 317 billion times per year members of the U.S. public check the weather on their phones, TVs or some other source. Those updates and alerts do everything from saving campers from rainy days to saving lives during big disasters. But what most of us don’t realize is that behind those forecasts, there’s a single, often invisible engine: the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration’s National Weather Service.

Now this federal agency, which serves as the backbone of U.S. forecasting, is under threat. What happens when the country’s most trusted source of extreme weather alerts can’t staff the night shift?

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