Rumors has it that staffers were required to sign the petition by higher ups in Washington DC. After speaking out about Washington’s decision of directing $2million for a NOAA public relations campaign rather than funding a new hurricane satellite it was over for Proenza. I guess Bush didn’t like that. Loyalty…..it’s all about loyalty. Competence doesn’t matter…..as long as you’re loyal!! I do have to say, though, that I love Ed Rappaport. I wondered why he wasn’t named director when Max Mayfield resigned. I figured he didn’t want the job, and it looks like that’s the case, since he’s been named the “acting director.” I imagine they offered him the job and he said no. But that’s just my guess. Living on the South Florida coast, this is an important issue for me. I was devastated when Max Mayfield retired, and I think he did so because no one in the Bush administration listens. He was disgusted after Hurricane Katrina.

From Reuters:

by Jim Loney

The director of the U.S. National Hurricane Center, a critical government agency that issues hurricane and tropical storm forecasts, was ousted on Monday after a staff mutiny.

Bill Proenza, who was appointed to the top hurricane job about six month ago, was embroiled in controversy after criticizing his Washington bosses for spending money on public relations while an aging weather satellite needed replacement.

After vowing not to be silenced, Proenza faced a revolt at the Miami hurricane center last week, when 23 staff members, about half the work force, issued a petition calling for him to resign.

They said Proenza had “poisoned the atmosphere” at the hurricane center, which also issues weather information widely used by nations throughout the Caribbean basin.

“We need to move forward,” NHC spokesman Dennis Feltgen said. “Effective immediately, Ed Rappaport will serve as acting director on an interim basis.”

Rappaport, a veteran hurricane forecaster, was the center’s deputy director.

Hurricane forecasts are used by local governments in the United States to determine coastal evacuations and can move energy and insurance markets when storms threaten major population centers or oil and gas rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.

Proenza’s initial volleys in a high-profile campaign to replace the aging QuikSCAT satellite won the support of several Florida politicians who portrayed him as a whistle-blower shedding light on the failings of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which runs the hurricane center.

Proenza said loss of the satellite, launched in 1999, would reduce the accuracy of long-range storm track forecasts by up to 16 percent.

But some of the hurricane center’s veteran forecasters said Proenza had exaggerated the importance of the satellite and plunged the agency into a distracting political battle just as the June 1-Nov. 30 hurricane season was heating up.

Proenza was named hurricane center director in January to replace Max Mayfield, who became a household name in the United States during the record’setting 2005 Atlantic hurricane season when Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans.

NOAA said Proenza is still an agency employee but would not elaborate.