New Hires Will Still Leave the NWS Dangerously Understaffed, Meteorologists Say
CLIMATEWIRE | New hiring efforts at the National Weather Service won't be enough to overcome staffing shortages and potential risks to human lives this summer, meteorologists warned Wednesday at a panel hosted by Democratic Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell.
NOAA will hire around 125 new employees at the NWS, the agency said in an announcement first reported Monday by CNN. But nearly 600 employees have departed the NWS over the last few months, after the Trump administration fired probationary federal employees and offered buyouts and early retirements.
That means the new hires will account for less than 25 percent of the total losses.
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'A quarter of the staff are not going to do the job when, let's just say, both hurricane and fire risks are increasing,' Cantwell said during Wednesday's panel. '[The Trump administration's] approach in response to this has been a flimsy Band-Aid over a very massive cut.'
Cantwell added that the National Hurricane Center is not fully staffed, as NOAA officials suggested last month when announcing their predictions for the upcoming Atlantic hurricane season outlook. The NHC has at least five vacancies, she said, representing meteorologists and technicians who help build forecasts for tropical cyclones in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
Meanwhile, NOAA is predicting above-average activity in the Atlantic this hurricane season. Updated fire maps also suggest that nearly all of Cantwell's home state of Washington, along with Oregon and large swaths of California, will experience an above-average risk of wildfires by August.
Kim Doster, NOAA's director of communications, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on NOAA's staffing shortages or the NHC's vacancies.
Three meteorologists speaking on the panel echoed Cantwell's concerns, suggesting that staffing shortages at weather offices across the country risk forecasting errors and breakdowns in communication between meteorologists and emergency managers.
At least eight local weather offices across the country are currently so short-staffed that they can no longer cover their overnight shifts, said Brian LaMarre, a former meteorologist-in-charge at the NWS office in Tampa Bay, Florida. Some of these offices may have to rely on 'mutual aid,' or borrowed staff, from other NWS locations to cover their shifts during extreme weather events.
But Cantwell and other panelists expressed concern that staff-sharing across the NWS could erode the accuracy of forecasts and warnings for local communities.
Cantwell pointed to the meteorologists that specialize in fire weather forecasts. NOAA typically deploys those experts to provide forecasts and recommendations to firefighters on the ground when wildfires strike.
'If you think you're gonna substitute somebody that's gonna be somewhere else — I don't know where, some other part of the state or some other state — and you think you're gonna give them accurate weather information? It just doesn't work that way,' she said.
Washington state-based broadcast meteorologist Jeff Renner echoed her concerns.
'The meteorologists that respond to [wildfires] have very specific training and very specific experience that can't be easily duplicated, particularly from those outside the area,' he said.
Meanwhile, LaMarre's former position in Tampa is vacant, and around 30 other offices across the country are also operating without a permanent meteorologist-in-charge.
'That person is the main point of contact when it comes to briefing elected officials, emergency management directors, state governors, city mayors, parish officials,' LaMarre said. 'They are the individual that's gonna be implementing any new change that is needed for hurricane season, blizzards, wildfires, inland flooding.'
The NWS suffered from staffing shortages prior to the Trump administration. But LaMarre said he never saw such widespread vacancies, including offices unable to operate overnight, in his 30 years at the agency.
He emphasized that NWS meteorologists will do whatever it takes to ensure accurate forecasts when extreme weather strikes. But too many gaps at local offices mean that some services will inevitably suffer, LaMarre added.
'Whenever you look at an office that is short-staffed, that means a piece of that larger puzzle is taken away,' he said. 'That means some outreach might not be able to occur. Some trainings might not be able to occur. Some briefings to officials might not be able to occur.'
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