Five former directors of the National Meteorological Service warn that additional cuts to agency’s staff could lead to unnecessary deaths during severe climate, such as tornadoes, forest fires and hurricanes.
“Our worst nightmare is that the time forecast offices will have such ease that there will be an unnecessary loss of lives. We know that it is a nightmare shared by those in the first prognosis line, and by the people who depend on their efforts,” they wrote in an open letter published on Friday.
The former directors, who served between 1988 and 2022, said that among the trump administration cuts to trial workers and personnel reductions through purchases, weather service staff have been reduced by more than 10% during the most busy time for severe storm predictions.
They said that they are also concerned about the Trump administration budget application for the next fiscal year, after the administration described in a letter to Congress a cut proposed by the $ 1.52 billion for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Matrix Agency of the Meteorological Service.
“NWS staff will have an impossible task to continue their current level of services,” they wrote, if more cuts are implemented. “Some forecast offices will have a staff of short personnel who can be forced to go to part -time services.”
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His protest against cuts in the weather service, and the NOAA, more widely, shows that agencies are a political pressure point, since the Trump administration seeks to reduce the size of the government. Meteorologists said that the cuts to the staff of the weather service have led less effective forecasts, which has stimulated some bipartisan reactions in the plain states where the severe climate affirms many lives.
The letter, which was sent to journalists by a publicist and also circulated on social networks, was signed by the former directors of the weather service: Louis Uccellini, Jack Hayes, Brig of the United States Air Force. Gen. DL Johnson, Brig of the US Air Force. UU. General John J. Kelly Jr. and the United States Air Force Colonel EW (Joe) on Friday.
They added: “As former directors of the National Meteorological Service, we know firsthand what is needed to cause precise forecasts to occur and we join the loss of personnel and resources in NWS and we are deeply concerned about NOAA as a whole.”
In a statement, the weather service said that internal staff and management issues would not discuss. He acknowledged that he was juggling with personnel concerns.
“We continue to provide weather information, forecasts and warnings in accordance with our public security mission,” the statement said. “The National Meteorological Service is adjusting some services due to temporary personnel changes in our local forecast offices throughout the country to better meet the needs of the public, our partners and the interested parties in the local area of each office. The work is underway to restore services in local forecast offices throughout the country.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comments.
The forecasts during the severe climate last month in Nebraska helped clarify the concerns about the cuts and took a Republican to Congress to speak.
On April 17, while the thunderstorms threatened Iowa and Nebraska, the meteorological service forecast office in Valley, Nebraska, near Omaha, launched a special weather balloon at 3 pm to evaluate the risk of storms, but did not launch a 7 PM balloon regularly scheduled due to staff cuts.
The Valley office was one of the more than 10 sites where the weather service announced that it would cancel balloons due to personnel scarcity.
Independent meteorologists said that the launch of the 7 PM balloon near Omaha could have helped the forecasters identify the risk of tornadoes before. The storms that seemed to be mainly a threat of hail in the data of the 3 -PM meteorological globe ended up producing six tornadoes that tracked in the east of Nebraska.
After the storm, representative Mike Flood, R-Neb., Said he took measures to intervene. At a press conference on April 25 registered by WOWT, affiliated with NBC, in OMAHA, said he learned that the Valley office staff had fallen from 13 forecast to eight, which left a small option rather than stop the operations of meteorological balloons.
After raising the problem, he told journalists that he had received a call from the White House in accordance with changes. Shortly after, the weather service sent two forecasts to meet a temporary task in the Valley office.
“We have changed politics throughout the country, and these temporary tax tasks are available so that the forecasts go to all other weather stations with little personal,” said Flood, adding that temporary tasks could become permanent and that the climate prognosis offices could make a new hiring.
He said he planned to introduce legislation to classify forecasts as public security workers, a measure that would probably exempt them from federal purchases and other personnel reduction policies.
“They are clearly public safety. And that is something we must do in Congress,” said Flood.
Rick Spinrad, former NOAA administrator under the then President Joe Biden, said the weather service was not a swollen objective for budget cuts.
“The weather service is costing every American 1 penny per day,” Spinrad said.
Personnel clippings have affected more than only meteorological balloons. Last month, the Meteorological Service Office in Sacramento, California, sent a memorandum to local media partners saying that it would reduce the provision of night personnel and stop responding public phones, among other changes.
On Friday, one of the former directors said he was particularly concerned that additional cuts could even more stress the staff of the night.
“The worst case we could have if this situation continues would be the development of a severe storm that would begin after midnight,” he said, added that the decisions of the weather service and local emergency planners could be the difference between the mermaids that wake up people to a danger, like a tornado. “We have holes throughout the weather service now that they are not well thought out.”
