Ahead of what’s expected to be a dangerous Atlantic hurricane season, the Trump administration announced plans to rehire employees for some of the National Weather Service jobs cut during DOGE’s layoff frenzy and reshuffle remaining staff to critical offices.
But those jobs still haven’t been posted, and some meteorologists say the institutional knowledge loss and ongoing staffing shortages are putting lives at risk — especially if two major weather events happen at the same time.
“The consequence of this reduced staffing is that we will start to see degraded forecasts from the weather service. The quality, the timeliness of the forecasts are going to have to suffer,” Rick Spinrad, former head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under Joe Biden, told NOTUS.