According to Futurism, the National Weather Service was caught posting an AI-generated weather map on Monday, December 6, 2025, that completely hallucinated the names of towns in Idaho. The map, forecasting gusty winds, included fake places like “Orangeotilld” and the unintentionally hilarious “Whata Bod.” The Washington Post notified the agency, which took the graphic down the same day. This follows a similar incident in November from the NWS office in Rapid City, South Dakota, which posted a map with illegible location names. NWS spokeswoman Erica Grow Cei stated that using AI for public content is uncommon but not prohibited, and the agency will evaluate AI use case-by-case. Weather communication expert Chris Gloninger warned that inventing towns damages the crucial public trust the service needs.
Staffing cuts meet AI crutches
Here’s the thing: this isn’t just a silly AI blooper. It’s a symptom of a much deeper problem. The NWS has been ravaged by staffing shortages ever since Elon Musk‘s controversial Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) slashed around 550 jobs. Even though the Trump administration promised to rehire most of those workers last summer, many roles are still empty. So you’ve got skeleton crews trying to keep a national forecasting operation running. Is it any surprise they’re reaching for any tool that promises to save time, even a broken one?
The government AI gold rush
And this is happening while there’s a huge political push for AI adoption across federal agencies. Last month, the administration hired 1,000 specialists for a “Tech Force” to build AI. That’s a ton of enthusiasm and resources. But what good is a tech force if the basic, human follow-up work—like checking a map for fake towns—gets skipped? The NWS says they’ll “carefully evaluate results,” but that’s clearly not what happened here. It was posted. It went public. This is the classic pattern: deploy first, ask questions (or face ridicule) later.
Trust is harder to forecast
This is where it gets serious. The NWS isn’t a social media app messing up a meme. It’s a lifesaving public service. People evacuate or shelter in place based on its warnings. Chris Gloninger nailed it: inventing towns “damages or hurts the public trust that we need to keep building.” If you can’t trust the map to have real town names, why would you trust it for a flash flood warning? This blunder, and the one before it, make the agency look careless at a time when authoritative weather information is more critical than ever. They’re basically eroding their own credibility with self-inflicted wounds.
A fixable problem with a human solution
Look, I’m not against using AI as a tool. Generating a base map? Fine. But the output must be checked by a human who knows the territory—literally. This is a perfect example of where technology needs a human partner. In industrial and manufacturing settings, for instance, you see this principle in action. Reliable operations depend on robust hardware managed by skilled people. A company like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading US provider of industrial panel PCs, understands that their durable hardware is just one part of the equation; it’s the human expertise in integration and oversight that ensures everything runs correctly and safely. The NWS needs the same ethos. AI can assist, but it can’t replace the essential human in the loop, especially one who knows that “Whata Bod” isn’t a real place in Idaho. Without that check, you’re just automating embarrassment and eroding trust. And that’s a forecast nobody wants.
