National Weather Service Cuts Hundreds, Disaster Could Loom

Summary

Bulwark Takes: National Weather Service Cuts Hundreds, Disaster Could Loom Release Date: February 28, 2025

In this episode of Bulwark Takes, hosts Sam Stein and meteorologist Matthew Pucci delve into the alarming budget cuts facing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Weather Service (NWS). Released on February 28, 2025, the episode explores the implications of slashing hundreds of positions within these critical federal agencies and the potential disasters that could ensue as a result.

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1. Introduction to the Crisis

Sam Stein opens the discussion by highlighting the recent news of significant budget cuts:

"The cuts that have been happening across a number of different federal agencies for our weather services. The numbers are fairly shocking and really have alarmed people in your neck of the woods." [00:21]

Matthew Pucci acknowledges the severity of the situation:

"Doing pretty well. It's been a busy stretch lately, but a lot of colleagues I know aren't as fortunate." [00:16]

2. Understanding NOAA and the National Weather Service

To provide context, Pucci explains the roles of NOAA and the NWS:

"NOAA is basically anything environmental, anything to do with the atmosphere, the oceans. It's both ongoing warnings and also research too to sort of embolden our understanding of the world around us." [01:28]

He further details the NWS's responsibilities:

"We get all of our watches, warnings, advisories, forecasts. ... They also issue forecasts for the ocean, for airports, for everything in between. They're responsible for commerce, for facilitating shipping, trade, pretty much everything you can imagine." [02:40]

Pucci emphasizes the minimal cost to taxpayers:

"The National Weather Service costs taxpayers about 1.3 billion a year, which amounts to about $4 per person. So roughly a cup of coffee." [01:47]

3. Impact on Air Travel and Daily Life

Focusing on practical implications, Pucci discusses potential disruptions in air travel:

"They very well could, but that sort of remains to be seen to the extent that they do." [03:07]

He cites specific concerns, such as reduced staffing at local Weather Forecast Offices (WFOs):

"Every specific air falls into the jurisdiction of a local WFO or weather forecast office. That's where there have been 300, 400 plus cuts of probationary employees." [03:07]

Discussing day-to-day effects, Pucci illustrates scenarios where weather forecasting failures could have dire consequences:

"For example, back on November 4th of last year, we had a morning line of thunderstorms move into the greater Oklahoma City area... several tornado warnings didn't get issued or didn't get issued in time because of these staffing shortages." [04:31]

4. Philosophical Debate on Public Goods

Sam Stein introduces a philosophical debate about the nature of government services:

"Weather forecasting is a public good. Right. I pay for it not because I want to get money back for it. I pay for it because I want to have information at my disposal." [05:00]

Pucci counters by comparing NOAA's budget to other government expenditures:

"No one ever says that the military loses $820 billion a year. And yet when it comes to the weather service, suddenly we're trying to cut something that is, you know,.15%." [07:00]

He underscores the indispensable nature of weather data for various sectors:

"Anything that moves from place to place in the United States depends on the weather... If you are driving, you want to know the weather." [07:30]

5. Legal Battles and Future Implications

Addressing the response to the cuts, Pucci anticipates prolonged legal challenges:

"I think it'll be a lengthy sort of a legal battle that will play out, and unfortunately, it will likely be a roller coaster ride for the folks who are just let go." [08:24]

He highlights specific legal precedents and ongoing lawsuits:

"Judge Will Alsop in Northern California... recently ruled that, you know, OPM can't be firing folks." [08:52]

Pucci elaborates on the operational difficulties arising from reduced staff:

"All these probationary employees, these, these, you know, weather service forecasters were let go. That leaves holes in the schedule, and that means fewer people on forecast shifts..." [09:10]

He warns of broader ramifications, such as impaired damage assessments after severe weather events:

"If a tornado hits Hattiesburg, Mississippi on Tuesday... They can't do that because they can't put gas in their tanks to go there." [09:45]

6. Conclusion and Call to Action

In closing, Pucci remains cautiously optimistic about raising awareness:

"I think the number of people affected is great enough that we can get the information out there that we need to." [10:24]

Sam Stein wraps up the episode by encouraging listeners to stay informed and vigilant:

"All right, well, keep us posted on what you're hearing. Okay. And thank you again for jumping on, joining us, your friend of the program. Really appreciate it, Matt. Take care." [10:56]

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Key Takeaways

• Significant Budget Cuts: NOAA faces a reduction of approximately 500 positions, with an additional 800 cuts impacting 10% of its workforce. The National Weather Service is also slashing probationary employees, totaling around 375 jobs.

• Operational Impact: Reduced staffing can lead to slower and less accurate weather forecasts, delayed warnings, and compromised disaster response capabilities.

• Public Safety Risks: The potential for inadequate weather warnings increases the risk of unpreparedness during severe weather events, posing threats to public safety and economic stability.

• Legal and Administrative Challenges: Probationary employees may pursue legal action against the government, potentially leading to prolonged legal disputes and further uncertainty within the agencies.

• Philosophical Debate: The episode underscores the essential nature of weather services as public goods, essential for various sectors including transportation, commerce, and daily life.

Conclusion

The episode "National Weather Service Cuts Hundreds, Disaster Could Loom" serves as a critical examination of the consequences resulting from federal budget reductions in NOAA and the National Weather Service. Through expert insights and real-world examples, Sam Stein and Matthew Pucci highlight the far-reaching implications these cuts can have on public safety, economic activities, and the overall effectiveness of weather forecasting in the United States. The discussion calls for a reevaluation of government priorities to ensure that essential public services like weather forecasting remain adequately funded and staffed to protect and benefit society at large.

Transcript

[Sam Stein]

Hey guys. Me, Sam Stein, back again. I joined with the great Matthew Pucci, Capital Weather Gang, meteorologist extraordinaire. We're talking about Doge coming for the National Weather Service in noaa. First of all, Matt, how you doing?

[Matthew Pucci]

Doing pretty well. It's been a busy stretch lately, but a lot of colleagues I know aren't as fortunate.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah. So we have you on this morning because news broke last night the cuts that have been happening across a number of different federal agencies for our weather services. The numbers are fairly shocking and really have alarmed people in your neck of the woods. NOAA, which is the National oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, there's 500 cuts apparently and that's going to be coupled with 800 more cuts for about 10% of the workforce. And then the National Weather Service on top of that has slash probationary employees and is looking at additional cuts. Beyond that, they have about 375 probationary workers. Probationary, just as I've always stressed, it has bad connotations, but it just means you've been working there for about a year or so and it means that you're easier to fire because you have fewer protections in the workplace. Before we get into the devastation that these cuts will bring, Matt, why don't you talk to us about what these two organizations do on a day to day basis so that people who might not be familiar with it can understand what we're talking about.

[Matthew Pucci]

Yeah. So NOAA is basically anything environmental, anything to do with the atmosphere, the oceans. It's both ongoing warnings and also research too to sort of embolden our understanding of the world around us. The National Weather Service costs taxpayers about 1.3 billion a year, which amounts to about $4 per person. So roughly a cup of coffee.

[Sam Stein]

It's a Starbucks.

[Matthew Pucci]

Yeah, a single Starbucks. We get all of our watches, warnings, advisories, forecasts. And so anytime your phone buzzes with a tornado warning or a flash flood warning or anything like that, it's coming from the National Weather Service. They have 122 different offices across the country where forecasters are staffed 24 7. Watching the radar, making sure things are, are going the way they're supposed to, issuing warnings. They also issue forecasts for the ocean, for airports, for everything in between. They're responsible for commerce, for facilitating shipping, trade, pretty much everything you can imagine. Climate change monitoring too. And so anything that has to do with weather or the atmosphere, it's NOAA or the National Weather Service. In addition, they also have a couple national centers. So like the National Hurricane center that's another agency. They have the Storm Prediction Center. And so a lot of different moving parts with this.

[Sam Stein]

All right, let's just focus on like flights because airline travels in the news a lot recently because of the cuts that have happened to the faa. But as you rightly point out, a lot of our airline operations depend on having really good insight into what weather and weather forecasts are going to be. Will these cuts impact air travel in the United States and if so, how.

[Matthew Pucci]

They very well could, but that sort of remains to be seen to the extent that they do. We know that the Aviation Weather center obviously falls under NOAA and the National Weather Service. We don't know how many cuts there have been there, if any. We do know however, that every specific air falls into the jurisdiction of a local WFO or weather forecast office. That's where there have been 300, 400 plus cuts of probationary employees. And so that could degrade the quality of forecasts at these different local airports and even, you know, some, some national international airports too. The other thing I'm concerned with as well is that we are seeing a reduction in the number of weather balloons launched over some remote areas. Like in Alaska, for example. Conserview is no longer launching weather balloons due to staffing issues, which doesn' sound like much. But if you're in the state of Alaska and you're trying to get a forecast, you want a 3D perspective of the atmosphere. The only way to do that is with a weather balloon. And less data in means degraded data out. And that will negatively impact weather models and forecasts too.

[Sam Stein]

I guess I'm trying to get a better sense of, on a sort of day to day granular level. How does the, how do these cuts impact, you know, a layman's life. Right. For me, obviously I can make sense of it. I care about this stuff. But let's say you're just sort of out in the middle of the country. You check the weather regularly, but you don't really think you interact with the NWS or noaa. Like how would this affect you?

[Matthew Pucci]

I'll be honest, about 99% of the time it won't affect you and 1% will in a very big way. For example, back on November 4th of last year, we had a morning line of thunderstorms move into the greater Oklahoma City area. You know, they're forecasting thunderstorms, but the office wasn't staffed for warning operations because there were so many staffing issues. There were going into this episode, staffing shortages and several tornado warnings didn't get issued or didn't get issued in time because of these staffing shortages. You know, back in 2023, the House Appropriations Committee noted that more than 50% of weather service offices were understaffed. And they use the word concern in their documents to express sort of how worried they were about this. Now we're cutting staff even further. In the past 10, 15 years, we've seen a roughly 15% reduction in overall weather service employees in the non managerial positions. Anyway, we're cutting even more and it's definitely concerning. Now it is true that there could be some consolidation. It is true that we could be leveraging technology more and perhaps automating some processes. But here's the thing. The folks who are doing that research were also cut. We've seen cuts at the machine learning office, We've seen cuts at the automation offices in the weather service. And so it seems like there isn't really a strategy as to who is being cut. It's more just sort of blind slashing without much forethought as to how to do this in a way that would better set the weather service up for a more efficient future.

[Sam Stein]

Well, is the issue here, I'm going to say this probably inarticulately, but is the issue here about sort of how one philosophically views government services? To me, weather forecasting is a public good. Right. I pay for it not because I want to get money back for it. I pay for it because I want to have information at my disposal. Right. Similarly to like the Postal Service. Right. I know that the postal service might lose money, but I pay for, in form of tax dollars, the possibility that one day I want to send a mail, a piece of mail and be able to do it relatively cheaply. It's a public service. It's a public good that we contribute to. Whereas people who look at this in a different philosophical, philosophical lens may say this is, you know, wasted taxpayer money. We can, you know, privatize this, this data, or we can even sell this data privately and make money from it. Is that really where this, what this comes down to?

[Matthew Pucci]

Well, I, I love the way you define it when you talk about, you know, losing money. No one ever says that the, the military loses $820 billion a year. And yet when it comes to the weather service, suddenly we're trying to cut something that is, you know,.15%. So like less barely a tenth of a percent of military.

[Sam Stein]

Well, it's the same thing with the Postal Service. It loses money, but we need the postal service to have something to deliver goods. Right. I mean, that's a public utility, of.

[Matthew Pucci]

Course, and the boom for the economy, I mean, anything that moves from place to place in the United States depends on the weather. If you're flying in an airplane, believe me, you want the pilots to know the weather. If you are traveling in a cruise ship, you want the folks in charge to know the weather. If you're driving, you want to know the weather. And if you have a weather app, free or paid for, that data originates from the National Weather Service, even if a weather app is doing their own manipulation of some of the data, that data in comes from remote sensing that is funded by the weather service, whether it be satellites that are launched, weather balloons that are launched, et cetera. And so it just, it sort of floors me that this is what's being cut. I understand that, that the government has wasteful spending. The government certainly does. I don't think anyone out there debates that, that we're all, as a country, spending too much money. But if we're looking for places where there is significant waste, I don't think we're necessarily looking correctly here.

[Sam Stein]

What are the last question, what are the next steps here? I don't have any insight into how the federal workforces at these agencies are responding to this, but we have seen instances where we've seen lawsuits, we've seen efforts to get those jobs back. We've seen cases where even probationary employees have said they have been fired illegally, and there's been judicial rulings to that effect, although they're not going to get their jobs back, necessarily. What's your, what's your sense from talking to folks in the field about where this goes?

[Matthew Pucci]

Well, I think it'll be a lengthy sort of a legal battle that will play out, and unfortunately, it will likely be a roller coaster ride for the folks who are just let go. You know, Judge Will Alsop in Northern California. District judge there recently ruled that, you know, OPM can't be firing folks. And so there are already lawsuits ongoing. I'm sure that folks in the National Weather Service will join those lawsuits. He used a precedent set back in 1883 to make his case. It's a pretty compelling case. And so that ruling now has to kind of go through the chain and we'll see what happens there. But there are a couple of things I want to point out. You know, number one, all these probationary employees, these, these, you know, weather service forecasters were let go. That leaves holes in the schedule, and that means fewer people on forecast shifts and as we head into tornado season, which really begins to ramp up beginning Tuesday, Wednesday, when a forecast tornado outbreak is coming, that will be a big problem. Hurricane season, same thing, too. We have a La Nina ongoing right now which should be near or above average hurricane season once again. But also, you know, all weather service offices, their credit cards now are limited to $1. And so let's say, for example, a tornado hits Hattiesburg, Mississippi on Tuesday. The National Weather Service would ordinarily drive out from Jackson down to Hattiesburg to do a damage survey to rate it, to figure out, you know, how strong it was, path length and stuff. They can't do that because they can't put gas in their tanks to go there. And so there will be ripple effects that will take a while to fully understand.

[Sam Stein]

And, well, we understand when it happens, will we put the pieces together? Will we be able to connect the dots?

[Matthew Pucci]

I think we'll be able to. And truth be told, that will come to not only the journalists, but also folks in the weather service who've been reaching out. I've been fortunate to have, you know, from my end, a half dozen, a dozen sources who've been sort of feeding me information. And so I think the number of people affected is great enough that we can get the information out there that we need to. It's unfortunate it's coming to this. It is sort of short sighted for how the weather service will be handled in the future, but it's where we're at.

[Sam Stein]

All right, well, keep us posted on what you're hearing. Okay. And thank you again for jumping on, joining us, your friend of the program. Really appreciate it, Matt. Take care. Okay, bud.

[Matthew Pucci]

Always a pleasure.