On Monday, June 23rd, the Department of Defense announced that it would "stop ingesting, processing, and transmitting data essential to most hurricane forecasts," from three satellites. The Defense Meteorological Satellite Program satellites to be turned off are F-16, F-17 and F-18. They know the data is essential, but the DoD is doing it anyway.
The next day, NOAA put up a service change notice to all users, including those monitoring the Atlantic skies at the Hurricane Center.
Though not immediately clear why the real-time data was suddenly discontinued, the decision appears to have stemmed from Department of Defense security concerns.
Since hurricanes form and strengthen over the open water where direct observations are scarce or nonexistent, forecasters rely largely on data remotely gathered from the satellites.
The Defense Meteorological Satellite Program and its constellation of three satellites provide nearly half of all microwave satellite scans to forecasters.