Senate Unanimously Passes Weather Act That Would Make Hurricane Forecast Improvement Permanent, Targeting Rapid Intensification and Storm Surge

The U.S. Senate has unanimously passed a sweeping bill to modernize the nation's weather forecasting system, including a provision that would turn the federal Hurricane Forecast Improvement Program into a long-term program aimed at better predicting rapid intensification, storm tracks and storm surge, the threats that matter most to Florida every hurricane season.

The Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Reauthorization Act of 2026, known as the Weather Act and numbered S. 3923, cleared the Senate on Tuesday, Nov. 10, according to the Senate Commerce Committee. It reauthorizes many of the forecasting and hazard communication programs run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the parent agency of the National Hurricane Center in Miami and the National Weather Service offices that issue warnings across the state.

The bill now goes to the House. Because Senate passage reflects a bicameral agreement, the committee said it is anticipated that the House will take it up and send it to the president before the 119th Congress ends in early January.

What the Senate passed

The legislation was introduced in February 2026 by Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Ranking Member Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., with a bipartisan group of cosponsors, and it cleared the committee unanimously the following month. According to Cruz, it brings together more than a dozen bipartisan bills.

"Today, the Senate took a pivotal step toward ensuring Americans are prepared for severe weather," Cruz said in a statement, pointing to the deadly July 4, 2025, floods in the Texas Hill Country. "The Weather Act brings together over a dozen bipartisan bills to modernize radar systems, deliver more accurate and timely forecasts, and improve warnings so families and first responders have more time to act, no matter where they are and no matter the time of day."

"Americans are facing increasingly dangerous and costly weather disasters, and better forecasts give communities more time to prepare and get out of harm's way," Cantwell said.

Neither of Florida's senators, Rick Scott and Ashley Moody, is listed among the bill's cosponsors in the committee's announcements, and no statement from either on the Senate vote had been released as of Thursday.

The hurricane provisions

For Florida, the most direct piece of the bill is the hurricane section. Cantwell's summary says the legislation builds on the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project by establishing it as a long-term program that will fold social, behavioral, risk and communication science into modeling, forecasts and response guidance.

The language comes from a bill by Sen. Ted Budd, R-N.C., who has cited the destruction Hurricane Helene caused in western North Carolina after it came ashore in Florida's Big Bend in 2024. According to Budd's office, the hurricane provision would direct NOAA to:

• Improve the prediction of rapid intensification and the track of hurricanes.
• Improve the forecast and communication of storm surge from hurricanes.
• Incorporate risk communication research to create more effective watch and warning products.
• Evaluate and incorporate innovative observations, including acoustic or infrasonic measurements.

"North Carolina knows all too well the risks when major storms strike," Budd said after the Senate vote, adding that two bills he wrote were included "to help enhance the accuracy of hurricane forecasts and communication, as well as modernize our radar system to get warnings out quicker."

Rapid intensification and surge are not abstract issues in Florida. Storms that strengthen quickly just before landfall leave coastal residents less time to evacuate, and storm surge has historically been the greatest threat to life when a hurricane makes landfall. Improvements in how the National Hurricane Center's forecasts translate into watches and warnings would reach every coastal county from Pensacola to Key West.

Radar, weather radios and algae blooms

The bill also tackles the aging Doppler radar network. Cantwell's office says it directs NOAA to design and deploy the next generation of weather radar by 2037 and lets the agency fill current coverage gaps with data and services bought from private companies. Budd's office says the Radar Next provisions also call for a test of phased array radar, which can scan the atmosphere in under a minute.

Other provisions with Florida relevance include:

• Upgrades to NOAA Weather Radio equipment and expanded coverage in rural areas without access to the alert system.
• A requirement that NOAA maintain and improve how the National Weather Service and FEMA support emergency managers and communicate hazardous weather to the public.
• Reauthorization of the national Harmful Algal Bloom and Hypoxia Program, with a new national harmful algal bloom observing network, an issue familiar to Floridians who have lived through red tide and blue-green algae outbreaks.
• A new interagency effort and NOAA information system on extreme heat.
• Codification of NOAA's commercial weather data program and the National Mesonet Program of automated weather stations.

A Congressional Budget Office cost estimate of the committee-approved bill puts its implementation at about $2.9 billion over 2027 through 2031. Authorization bills set spending levels and policy, but the money itself must still be approved by appropriators.

Why insurers and Florida homeowners are watching

The property insurance industry has lined up behind the bill. When the Commerce Committee advanced it in March, the American Property Casualty Insurance Association praised the move as a bipartisan step that would help insurers anticipate risk and reduce losses, Insurance Business reported. The trade publication described insurers rallying behind the legislation amid deep cuts at NOAA, including workforce reductions.

Better forecasts feed directly into the catastrophe models insurers and reinsurers use to price Florida coverage. The state's most recent test came this fall: Hurricane Isaias, the Oct. 9 storm whose claims have been concentrated in the western Panhandle, had produced about 55,000 insurance claims and an estimated $651 million in insured losses as of early November, Insurance Journal reported, citing data reported to the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation.

Cantwell has also pushed separately for the NOAA Hurricane Hunter fleet, which is based at the agency's Aircraft Operations Center in Lakeland. In June she introduced the Hurricane Hunter Aircraft Recapitalization Act, which would codify the hurricane hunter mission in federal law and authorize up to nine aircraft, according to her office. Her office's announcement does not say that measure is part of the Weather Act package.

What's next

The House Science, Space, and Technology Committee advanced its own Weather Act reauthorization in September 2025, and the Senate-passed version reflects a compromise between the two chambers, committee leaders said. House Science Chairman Brian Babin, R-Texas, said he looks forward to "continuing our efforts to get this legislation across the finish line." Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said, "This is a long time coming," and urged the president to sign it.

The timing matters. If the House does not act before the current Congress adjourns, the bill would have to be reintroduced when the new Congress, with Democrats in control of both chambers, convenes in January.