National Weather Service buyouts will leave gaps as storm season ramps up

Boston Globe

17-04-2025

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The looming gaps have elevated fears particularly for forecasters in central states, including in the heart of the country, where tornadoes and menacing storms are frequent. As severe storm season ramps up, it's the offices in places such as Kansas City, Omaha, Louisville, Des Moines and Grand Rapids that were facing the most significant staffing shortages after buyouts earlier this year, according to people familiar with the agency.
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With so many recent departures, it's not business as usual for operations at many forecast offices. More forecasters are working overtime, fewer shifts are being staffed each day and managers who wouldn't normally take on day-to-day forecasting duties have had to step in, according to current and former Weather Service employees.
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'You can only stretch things so much,' said Alan Gerard, who recently retired from the National Severe Storms Laboratory and was previously the meteorologist-in-charge at the Weather Service forecast office in Jackson, Mississippi. 'Eventually, things start to break.'
As they face staff losses and increasing workloads, Weather Service staff are working through plumbing and maintenance issues at austere offices, including in the central region, multiple people familiar with the agencies described. In one recent example, staff at a Kentucky office had to rely on portable toilets in the parking lot during deadly storms in the Mid-South.
Any new staff reductions, which will take effect by May, also come on top of a cascade of early retirements and other departures this year. Across all of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes offices that manage fisheries, conduct earth science research and study climate change, more than 870 employees had volunteered for buyouts as of Wednesday, according to two officials.
The Post spoke with 10 employees across the Weather Service and its parent agencies, NOAA and the Commerce Department, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Concerned with leaks to the media, the administration is installing monitoring software on NOAA employees' devices to track their communications, two current employees said.
Before Trump returned to office, the Weather Service employed about 4,300 people, still some 200 short of staffing levels that agency leaders then called ideal. After an initial round of DOGE-led buyouts and the firing of employees who were still on probationary status, that workforce dropped to below 4,000 for the first time in modern history, the union representing those workers said at the time.
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The latest round of buyouts was expected to shrink the workforce
even further: At least 300 Weather Service employees had applied for the program as of Tuesday, according to the two staffers who described Graham's comments. More were expected to take the offer before it expired at midnight Friday. About 1,400 Weather Service employees were eligible for the buyouts, according to one service official with knowledge of the program.
Tom Fahy, legislative director for the National Weather Service Employees Organization, a union representing the agency's rank and file, said in a statement that 'attrition and retirements have been a huge factor in creating job vacancies' but stressed that Weather Service employees 'have an enduring, resilient work ethic.'
'The mission to save lives has not suffered and communities are still being covered across the country by NWS employees,' Fahy said.
NOAA began the year with about 13,000 employees but has lost hundreds through the firing of probationary employees, early retirements and buyouts, according to officials close to the agency.
Staff across the Weather Service and NOAA feared further cuts through reduction in force, or RIF, could be imposed in the coming days or weeks, perhaps as early as Friday. Ahead of the latest buyout offer, Trump administration officials set a target of cutting NOAA staff by about 1,000, a number believed to include several hundred Weather Service employees, according to officials familiar with the goals. It was not clear to employees if buyouts could reduce the number of any RIF layoffs.
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The Trump administration has meanwhile proposed a budget for the coming fiscal year that would slash NOAA's budget by 27 percent, while virtually eliminating most climate research and maintaining flat funding for the Weather Service.
Staff losses have stressed Weather Service forecast offices that were stretched thin even before Trump took office.
Each one is responsible for producing forecasts and monitoring weather dangers across areas stretching from hundreds to thousands of square miles. While there are many sources of weather forecasts, from smartphone apps to broadcast radio and TV, the Weather Service's data and predictions undergird them all. The agency is also responsible for warning the public when a tornado, hurricane or other extreme weather threat is imminent.
This week, a new forming storm is expected to bring a threat of severe thunderstorms and heavy rainfall to more than a dozen states in the central United States, including in several states that have recently been hard-hit by tornadoes and floods.
Each office typically employs 14 or 15 meteorologists, enough to maintain staffing around-the-clock, with two or three on hand at any one time to produce forecasts, launch weather balloons, and answer calls from local emergency managers and the public. During active weather, be it thunderstorms, tornado outbreaks, snowstorms or wildfires, staffing demands increase, requiring two or three times as many meteorologists to be on hand, said Gerard, who led the Jackson, Mississippi, office from 2002 to 2015.
Staffing shortages have also prompted some Weather Service offices to conduct fewer weather balloon launches or suspend them entirely. Twice-daily launches from 92 sites across the country provide detailed data on atmospheric and weather conditions - vital information for developing weather forecasts and informing aircraft pilots of potentially dangerous conditions. Offices need at least two or three meteorologists on hand to safely conduct balloon launches while also maintaining normal forecasting operations.
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There have been limited or no weather balloon data across a wide swath of the northern Plains and Rocky Mountains, with no launches in late March or early April from sites in Rapid City, South Dakota; Valley, Nebraska; or Denver, where balloon launch issues go back years because of helium shortages. Balloon launches have occurred only once a day in recent weeks at sites in Riverton, Wyoming; Grand Junction, Colorado; North Platte, Nebraska; and Green Bay, Wisconsin.
More cutbacks in balloon launches and other Weather Service activities can be expected as offices lose staff, according to a Commerce Department memorandum issued to Weather Service leaders that was obtained by The Post.
As staffing levels drop and vacancy rates reach at least 20 percent, the directive advised having only a single meteorologist on duty at any given time during quiet weather periods, for example.
Under an initial version of the memo issued in March, the directive advised reducing weather balloon launches from twice daily to once if staffing levels drop to 15 percent vacancy or greater, and to suspend launches altogether at vacancy rates of at least 35 percent.
But an update issued last week encourages the critical launches to continue until staff losses are even larger. The new version advises once-daily launches at 25 percent vacancy rates and says launches should be suspended only in scenarios in which no second meteorologist is available to help prepare the operation.
Amid staffing reductions, increased scrutiny from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has separately prevented some contracts from being renewed. The agency leader has been personally reviewing any contracts worth $100,000 or more, a process that has ground some work to a halt, multiple officials said.
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Earlier this month, the Weather Service said its warnings would no longer be automatically translated into Spanish, because a contract with an AI firm had lapsed. That decision breaks with previous agency goals to improve translations and increase the number of languages offered, in part a response to communication challenges that contributed to deadly disasters such as floods in New York City and a tornado outbreak that affected Mayfield, Kentucky.
Even as meteorologists say forecasts and warnings have not yet suffered, morale has been sinking.
As meteorologists began forecasting a four-day stretch of dangerous tornadic storms and potentially 'generational' flooding, they came within hours of losing access to software that a Weather Service website calls a 'cornerstone IT system' that is used 'to ingest, analyze, forecast, [and] disseminate operational weather data.' Its contract was renewed late on March 31, in an episode previously reported by Axios.
At least 29 people died during those storms. But days of warnings and some luck with the weather meant the storms were not as deadly as meteorologists feared.
But critics of the cuts argue that it's a matter of when, not if, any staffing losses will prevent meteorologists from carrying out a mission to protect lives and property.
'This isn't about finding government waste; this isn't about finding fraud. This is about making sure the United States of America is protected,' said Rep. Eric Sorensen (D-Illinois), who worked as a television meteorologist before joining Congress. 'I am incredibly worried about the safety of my own constituents.'
During this month's Mid-South storm outbreak, one tornado came within miles of the forecast office in Paducah, Kentucky, where staff had to use portable toilets in the office parking lot because the bathrooms were inoperable and staff were unable to hire a plumber, according to officials familiar with the situation. Some of the recent scrutiny of contracts has included halting basic facility repairs.
The storm outbreak would be a trying situation under any circumstances, but the staffing shortages and working conditions were only worsening morale among meteorologists, employees said.
'People keep working 12-hour shifts day after day,' said one Weather Service official. 'It really starts to take its toll.'