A Kentucky Weather Office Scrambles for Staffing as Severe Storms Bear Down
A National Weather Service office in eastern Kentucky was scrambling to cover the overnight forecast on Friday as severe storms were moving through much of the eastern United States, according to the union that represents the department's meteorologists.
Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the union that represents Weather Service employees, said the office in Jackson, Ky., was one of four that no longer had a permanent overnight forecaster after hundreds of people left the agency as a result of cuts ordered by the Department of Government Efficiency, the initiative led by Elon Musk that is reshaping the federal bureaucracy.
Mr. Fahy said on Friday that because of the threat for flooding, hail and tornadoes facing eastern Kentucky, the Weather Service had to find forecasting help for the office.
A spokeswoman for the Weather Service said the Jackson office would be relying on nearby offices for support through the weekend.
Multiple rounds of storms passed through eastern Kentucky on Friday morning and afternoon, and the overnight hours were expected to be stormy. A line of thunderstorms was forecast to sweep the region overnight, whipping up damaging winds and large hail. There is also a chance for isolated supercells, long-lasting storms that can deliver even stronger winds and bigger hail than typical thunderstorms and also generate tornadoes.
Much of Kentucky, including a portion of the eastern section, is within the bull's-eye of an area under what the Storm Prediction Center calls a 'moderate' threat — a four out of five in its levels of risk — of severe thunderstorms.
'It's very rare that we see a moderate risk in our area, so I think people are aware,' said Jane Marie Wix, a meteorologist at the Weather Service office in Jackson.
By late Saturday morning, quieter weather and drier conditions are expected and will most likely continue into Sunday morning, before a chance for additional storms arrives close to the borders of Virginia and Tennessee by the middle of the day.
It is not unusual for a forecasting office to rearrange staff members for extreme weather. But until recently, most would have at least two or three people scheduled around the clock.
Three other offices, in northwestern Kansas, Sacramento and Hanford, Calif., also no longer have forecasters overnight, Mr. Fahy said, and four more, in Cheyenne, Wyo., Marquette, Mich., Pendleton, Ore., and Fairbanks, Alaska, are days away from the same fate.
'For most of the last half century NWS has been a 24/7 operation — not anymore,' Mr. Fahy said.
Nearly 600 people have left the Weather Service in recent months, through a combination of layoffs and retirements, after the Trump administration demanded that it and its parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, make significant cuts. The Weather Service's 122 forecasting offices have traditionally operated 24 hours a day, with each one responsible for monitoring the weather in its region.
Because of the staffing cuts, some offices have also curtailed the twice-daily launches of weather balloons that collect data that fuels daily forecasts and forecast models. An agreement last month between the Weather Service and its employees' union warned of 'degraded' services as more people leave, and five of the department's former directors recently wrote an open letter saying they feared the cuts had been so deep that lives would soon be endangered.
Kim Doster, a spokeswoman for NOAA, confirmed this week that 'several local NWS offices are temporarily operating below around-the-clock staffing.'
She said the Weather Service 'does not anticipate a significant impact in services as we work to mitigate potential impacts and direct other regional offices to provide additional support.'
The Weather Service has scrambled recently to reorganize staffing, sending forecasters to the offices most deeply affected by the losses. Balloon launches resumed in Omaha after the Nebraska congressional delegation announced that it had persuaded the White House to restore some of the staffing that had been lost there.
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