After Staff Cuts, the National Weather Service Is Hiring Again

New York Times

2 days ago

After losing nearly 600 employees to layoffs and retirements as part of the Trump administration's sweeping cuts to the federal work force, the National Weather Service is planning to hire additional staff members to 'stabilize' the department, a spokeswoman said.
Erica Grow Cei, a spokeswoman for the National Weather Service, said 'a targeted number' of permanent positions would soon be advertised.
Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the union that represents Weather Service employees, said the department had been granted an exemption to President Trump's governmentwide hiring freeze to hire 126 people in positions around the country, including meteorologists, hydrologists, physical scientists and electronics technicians.
In recent months, the Weather Service said it was preparing for 'degraded operations' with fewer meteorologists available to fine-tune forecasts. Some forecasting offices no longer had enough staff members to operate overnight, and others had to curtail the twice-daily launches of weather balloons that collect data on atmospheric conditions that feed into forecast models.
The meteorologists still on staff were being asked to shuffle around the country in short-term assignments to fill gaps where the cuts had made the deepest impact.
At the same time, the country has seen a nonstop pace of deadly and expensive weather disasters this year, including the California wildfires, several tornado outbreaks and severe hailstorms. On the cusp of the Atlantic hurricane season, which began on Sunday, some observers had expressed concerns about understaffed offices and fatigue.
At a news conference in New Orleans last month to announce that it was forecasting an above-average hurricane season, officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Weather Service's parent agency, acknowledged those concerns indirectly.
'We are fully staffed' at the National Hurricane Center, said Laura Grimm, NOAA's acting administrator, calling hurricane response a top priority for the Trump administration. 'We are very supportive of our national weather staff,' she said.
Representative Mike Flood, a Republican from Nebraska — who in April helped persuade the White House to restore some of the staff positions lost at one local forecasting office — praised the hiring decision on Monday.
'Hiring these positions will help ensure that the agency is able to deliver information the public relies on across the nation to stay safe amid severe weather,' he said.