National Weather Service employees are facing a perfect storm.
Wave after wave of their colleagues have retired, resigned or been fired from the agency. Weather equipment is deteriorating, and the staff who remain can’t quickly get the parts or service they need to fix it. Understaffed offices are struggling to launch weather balloons and rotate employees through shifts to watch for emergency conditions, like tornadoes or hurricanes.
Over the past few months, cost-cutting efforts by the Trump administration have dug away at the weather monitoring agency’s workforce. Early retirements, voluntary resignations and firings have all occurred, and while some terminated employees have been brought back, they’ve been placed on paid leave. Additional voluntary early retirements are expected to further shrink NWS’s staff in weeks to come.
“It’s impacting forecasting operations,” one NWS employee said of the recent loss of staff. “It’s impacting our data collection. It’s impacting our ability to staff these offices. Eventually, the system’s gonna break.”
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an agency of roughly 12,000 people that houses NWS, has already lost at least 650 employees, former administrator Rick Spinrad said in a press call. At least 1,000 more are expected to leave or be let go. NOAA is in the Department of Commerce.
The NWS employee, who spoke with Agri-Pulse on the condition of anonymity, said roughly 400 employees have retired in recent months. Another 180 or so took the Office of Personnel Management’s "Fork in the Road" voluntary resignation offer. Another 100 to 150 probationary employees were believed to have been terminated, but have since been brought back under a court order and placed on paid leave, the source said.
NWS was already short 600 people before the end of last year, and 100 candidates who were in the process of being hired were ultimately not brought on, they added. What was once a staff of roughly 4,000 people has now fallen below 3,000, the source said.
As a result, forecasts could suffer. A smaller NWS staff means fewer people able to maintain equipment, collect data, and build weather models. Employees on ships, planes, and in offices across the country and world collect data points that are then fed into mathematical models, which predict wind pattern shifts, drought, storm movements and daily and weekly weather conditions, said Craig McLean, a former NOAA assistant administrator for research and acting chief scientist.
“You’re going to see degradation in the weather forecast, period.” McLean said. “It’s not going to be as accurate. We’re going to be going backwards more to the level of accuracy we had in the ‘70s, I would say, than what we have become accustomed to.”
Weather balloon operations have been suspended at Kotzebue, Alaska; Omaha, Nebraska; and Rapid City, South Dakota, due to a lack of staff, according to NWS notices. Daily launches will likely be reduced in Albany, New York, and Gray, Maine, though these offices will still try to release two per day if staffing allows.
Weather balloon launches have been reduced to one per day in Aberdeen, South Dakota; Grand Junction, Colorado; Green Bay, Wisconsin; Gaylord, Michigan; North Platte, Nebraska; and Riverton, Wyoming, according to the notices.
Weather balloons are among the most reliable methods for collecting weather data, according to Toby Ault, an associate professor of atmospheric sciences at Cornell University. They’re able to float into parts of the stratosphere that are otherwise hard for scientists to reach, where they can gauge temperature, pressure, elevation and wind speeds. They’re relatively cost-effective and have been used by NWS for almost a century.
Launching these balloons is a two-person job, Ault said. One person needs to inflate them, while another person must monitor the radio signal coming back.
Fewer launches could make it harder to predict how and where wildfires will spread in the Southwest, or the strength of hurricanes in the Southeast, Ault said. Balloon data often feeds the hourly forecasts farmers rely on to know when to plant, or when to park their tractors in the shed due to storms.
“We’re getting critical information about a part of the atmosphere that we don’t have any other way of observing,” Ault said of the benefits balloons provide. “Without that information, we’re missing important parts of the weather story.”
NOAA spokesperson Michael Musher told Agri-Pulse in an email that the agency does not discuss internal personnel and management matters. While he said he couldn’t speculate on the future impacts of fewer weather balloon launches, he did say, “the more data we can feed into our weather models, the more accurate our forecasts."
Staffing reductions, spending freezes hit regional offices
Tracking and responding to extreme weather is a team effort. And NWS offices need reliable people who can be called on to help out in times of emergency, said University of California climate scientist Daniel Swain.
Meteorologists track storms’ progress. Hydrologists predict flooding impacts. Public information officers distribute up-to-date risk information to the public.
While ideal employee counts vary based on location, the NWS employee who spoke to Agri-Pulse said a standard office should have between 23 and 25 people to function smoothly, including five or six lead forecasters paired with six to eight journey forecasters, who receive training from the lead forecasters.
Employees rotate through different office stations through the day, including manning the radar booth, which can leave them “fried” if they sit at it for longer than four hours, the employee said.
After the downsizing efforts, some offices are now down to seven or eight people, or less. The NWS office in Goodland, Kansas, now has only five meteorologists. Offices in other parts of the central U.S. also face low staffing levels, including Des Moines, Iowa; Kansas City, Missouri; Louisville, Kentucky; Wichita, Kansas; Rapid City, South Dakota; Cheyenne, Wyoming; and Omaha, Nebraska.
Fewer employees are now able to rotate through stations. In emergency situations like tornadoes or hurricanes, cutbacks may force staff to work 12- to 16-hours shifts, as they issue alerts and watch for developments.
Due to travel restrictions, employees from other locations are unable to come into offices to help out during emergencies, unless officials high in the agency give them the go-ahead, the employee said. At the same time, an ongoing hiring freeze prevents offices from bringing on new employees to help.
“We’re not gonna let anybody die because of us,” the employee said. “We’re gonna make sure we issue the warnings and get it all done. But the problem is going to be, we’re going to run out of humans. You’re not going to have enough people to swap out. They’re going to sit there and warn until they literally collapse.”
Leases for some offices are being terminated. Among these is a Maryland facility that houses NOAA’s Center for Weather and Climate Prediction, according to an online database the Department of Government Efficiency calls its "Wall of Receipts.” This facility would be where long-term forecasts would be developed by monitoring patterns in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
In addition, the agency plans to end leases for offices in Port Angeles, Washington; Idaho Falls and Boise, Idaho; Narragansett Pier, Rhode Island; Wall Township and Northfield, New Jersey; Hilo, Hawaii; Key Largo, Sunrise and Seffner, Florida; Eureka, California; Seward and Juneau, Alaska; Barre, Vermont; Hampton, Virginia; Salisbury, Maryland; and Salem, Oregon.
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Contractors are being impacted, too. McLean, the former NOAA assistant administrator for research and acting chief scientist, said all contracts totaling $100,000 or more must now be approved by officials at the highest levels of the Commerce Department. But $100,000 doesn’t cover even a full year of a typical contractor’s services, he said.
These contractors help the agency collect data, do analyses or service equipment, McLean said.
“What Trump and DOGE are doing is really shutting things off, in many cases, unwittingly and ignorant of the consequences,” McLean said of contracting restrictions. “When you take a chainsaw to something, you’re cutting all the branches and the leaves down. You’re not just taking the stalk out.”
Contracts have been terminated for some third-party specialists who would normally check and repair equipment, the NWS employee told Agri-Pulse. Some NWS offices are having problems powering weather radios or automated surface observation systems at remote sites due to electricity bills not being paid, they added.
Employee credit cards used for purchasing items now have a $1 limit, making it difficult for workers to replace soil temperature sensors, rain gauge tubes and parts needed for repairing weather equipment unless they secure approval from certain officials, the worker said.
“There’s a lot of these critical data points that people are not gonna have access to because these systems are failing,” the NWS employee said. “And we can’t fix it right now. Just doing routine maintenance is pretty much nuts.”
Letting specialists go can have consequences if there is no one else around with the same body of knowledge, Swain said. Data flows between field offices and centers that focus on particular types of weather analysis. If this connection is impaired, current NWS staff may struggle to find and rectify the source of the problem, he said.
“If computer screens are blank in a local office because someone cut a cord somewhere and no one knows how to fix it, we’re in pretty big trouble,” Swain said.
Farmers worry about reliability of forecasts amid staffing limitations
Iowa farmer Rod Pierce tries to be very careful when planning for field work. When he goes out to spray, he keeps a close eye on wind direction and speed to prevent pesticides from drifting. He uses weekly forecasts in the fall to ensure he’s choosing the right time to harvest his crops.
“It kind of gives us an idea of how to manage our timing. That’s the biggest thing.” Pierce said of NWS data. He added that while he knows the agency’s forecasts are not typically 100% right, “they’re right enough to help steer us in the right direction.”
But now, Pierce worries staffing reductions at NWS may reduce the quality of those forecasts. McLean, the former NOAA assistant administrator, says that will likely be the case.
“The farmer will have less certainty over what crops to plant, how to plan for their profit margin, how to plan for droughts and the severity of those droughts,” McLean said.
Upon waking up each morning, Kansas farmer Tom Giessel logs into his computer to check the weather. He does the same thing before he goes to bed. He calls NWS a “lifelong partner” to his farming operation. And he, too, worries about the cuts.
“I’d rather have access to a fully staffed weather service than I would to GPS in my tractor. I think it’s more valuable,” Giessel said.
Giessel uses NWS forecasts to help choose which crops he’s going to plant, or decide when to spray and harvest. He has NOAA radios installed in his tractors. He relies on the agency’s alerts to keep tabs on wildfires and dust storms, which he says are happening more frequently in his area.
“We build our farms, we build our communities around a lot of these functions,” he said of NWS services. “We just can’t afford to go backward.”
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