* https://apnews.com/article/weather-forecasts-worsen-doge-tru...
* https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
A good book on the history of forecasting, The Weather Machine: A Journey Inside the Forecast:
Would that be practical for weather forecasting or not really?
What are the conditions at 5000 feet, 10000, etc? What is the location of the jet stream and its strength? The reduced number of (e.g.) weather balloons is hindering forecasts (per the links).
The data that would be most valuable to initial conditions is upper-atmosphere winds -- this is the kind of data given by weather balloons. In clear air there's no great way to measure this from either the ground or from space.
One important supplemental data source here are aviation reports, from planes flying at altitude and particularly trans-oceanic routes. When air traffic was largely curtailed during the early phase of the Covid pandemic, weather forecasting suffered a bit for the lack of data (see eg https://www.ecmwf.int/en/about/media-centre/news/2020/drop-a...).