18-05-2025
Trump cuts halt local overnight weather forecasts for Eastern WA, OR
The National Weather Service office providing forecasts and hazardous weather warnings for the greater Tri-Cities area will no longer be staffed at night because of Trump administration job cuts and a federal hiring freeze.
The office in Pendleton, Ore., serves one of the largest areas outside of Alaska.
Its Washington state service area includes Benton, Franklin, Walla Walla, Yakima, Columbia, Kittitas and Klickitat counties. It also covers 11 counties in Eastern Oregon, including Umatilla and Morrow counties.
The Washington Post reported Friday that it is one of about seven areas in the nation where overnight forecasting will no longer be done.
It said that other weather service offices, many of which also have had staff cuts, will provide overnight coverage for offices that are no longer staffed around the clock.
In the Pacific Northwest other offices include those in Seattle, Spokane, Portland, Boise and Medford, Ore.
The weather service office in Pendleton tracks and forecasts hazardous weather conditions and issues alerts and warnings for hail storms, wind storms, thunderstorms, flooding, heat waves, ice storms, freezing rain, heavy snowfall and blowing dust or snow that can reduce visibility on roadways and cause dangerous pileups.
Information is important to commuters, outdoor workers, farmers with crops and animals to protect, and school officials deciding whether classes should be canceled, among others.
The weather service also provides information on changing weather conditions critical to fighting wildland fires in the shrub steppe land of Eastern Washington and forest fires in the Blue Mountains.
Overnight staffing at the Pendleton office of the weather service, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), will end this week, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said Friday night.
'The Trump administration's dismantling of the NOAA workforce is crippling the National Weather Service,' she said in a statement.
'It is unacceptable that the weather forecast office for central Washington state will no longer have enough meteorologists to staff overnight shifts, which will jeopardize local forecasts and warning information which is imperative for firefighters, transportation workers, the public and emergency managers,' she said.
She called on the Trump administration to immediately approve NOAA's request for a public safety exemption and lift the hiring freeze.
At a hearing in February for the confirmation of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, she asked if he believed NOAA should be dismantled as called for in Project 2025.
'Mr. Lutnick gave very tepid support for NOAA,' she said then.
Cantwell, the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, sent him a letter then saying that the Jan. 20 executive order instituting a hiring freeze for all federal civilian employees should be lifted for NOAA, due to 'the critical role that agency plays in public safety and supporting our economy.'
'NOAA is the nation's leading scientific agency charged with forecasting weather, monitoring our oceans and atmosphere, managing our fisheries, restoring our coasts, and supporting maritime commerce,' the letter said. 'NOAA products and services, such as forecasts, are crucial to the U.S. economy and affect more than one-third of America's gross domestic product.'
Last year there were 27 weather disasters in the nation that cost more than $1 billion each and led to 568 deaths, she said.
The National Weather Service had no one available Saturday to provide information on staffing changes.
