This year’s Atlantic hurricane season begins on June 1 and is expected to be above average, yet the National Weather Service (NWS) has vacancies of critical forecasting positions along coastal Texas and Louisiana. The Houston regional office needs both a meteorologist-in-charge and a senior meteorologist. May is also the peak of tornado season, and people need very timely and very accurate weather data. In total the NWS is scrambling to fill 155 positions nationwide by May 27, but most in need are 76 positions for meteorologists. These are the meteorologists who meet with local mayors and emergency managers during severe weather events to create storm preparedness—the nation’s first line of defense for these types of emergencies.
Said Tom DiLiberto, a former NOAA official, “We’re not prepared. We’re heading into hurricane season as unprepared as anytime as I can imagine.” According to the National Weather Service Employees Organization, the union that represents NWS employees, at least four NWS offices have no staff for the night shift and at least another four offices will soon be in the same condition. Tom Fahy, legislative director of the union wrote, “For most of the last half-century NWS has been a 24/7 operation—not anymore thanks to Elon Musk.”
On Feb. 27, Elon Musk’s DOGE gave “termination notices” to 375 probationary employees at the NWS and started two rounds of career-staff reductions, which totaled about 1,300 employees. Virtually every office has reduced staffing, including people who operate the weather radar or computer systems. Five former directors of the NWS sent an open letter warning that the job cuts would result in the “loss of life.” Daniel Swain, a researcher at UCLA wrote that the job cuts “are spectacularly short-sighted, and ultimately will deal a major self-inflicted wound to the public safety of Americans and the resiliency of the American economy to weather and climate-related disasters.”
