The 155 vacancies the agency is seeking to fill by May 27 include key weather forecasting positions at offices in coastal Texas and Louisiana that could soon face hurricane threats when the Atlantic season begins in a few weeks. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the weather service’s parent agency, is also asking large numbers of meteorologists to move to offices in Alaska and across the northern Plains in Nebraska, Wyoming and South Dakota. Without the transfers, there are fears that some offices could struggle to monitor weather threats, issue aviation forecasts and launch weather balloons around-the-clock, according to current and former weather service officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak for the agency. Agency officials did not immediately respond to questions from The Post.
The solicitations lay bare how significantly the Trump administration has whittled away the corps of public servants responsible for the forecasting, warnings and information that can protect lives and property when extreme weather strikes. An estimated 500 National Weather Service employees have taken early retirements or been fired this year, out of a staff that numbered more than 4,200 before President Donald Trump began his second term, the officials said. But the action is spurring some hope that, after five months of efforts to cut staff, administration officials are heeding concerns that the nation could now be less prepared for major storms or other events, said Brian LaMarre, who retired from the weather service last month after a career that included 17 years as meteorologist in charge of the forecasting office in Tampa, Florida.
The number of vacancies underscores how in the administration’s efforts to streamline government and boost efficiency it may be threatening core agency functions, he said. “We’ve got to be careful on how much efficiency we’re looking for,” said LaMarre, who had been working on a National Weather Service initiative to reinvent the agency’s staffing model. “The more efficient we make something, sometimes it becomes less effective.”
Such requests for transfers have always been relatively common at such a large agency but never covered so many positions and rarely included an offer of moving expenses, the officials who spoke with The Post said. The vacant positions include 76 meteorologists, including rank-and-file forecasters as well as the managers who run each of the service’s 122 forecast offices around the country. Other roles include technicians and analysts who are essential to keeping agency radar and computer systems running.
On the Gulf Coast, the Lake Charles, Louisiana, office needs a meteorologist-in-charge and two senior meteorologists. In the forecasting office that oversees the Houston region, the agency is also seeking a meteorologist-in-charge and a senior meteorologist.
The office in Fairbanks, Alaska, needs five meteorologists. The Hanford, California, office is seeking four meteorologists, an electronics systems analyst, an electronics technician and an information technology officer. An office in Goodland, Kansas, needs three senior meteorologists, while several offices in Arkansas, Michigan, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming are seeking two senior meteorologists. Offices overseeing the Cleveland and Cincinnati regions are seeking a meteorologist-in-charge.
NOAA is asking four meteorologists to move to the U.S. territory of Guam to fill forecasting positions there.
Good thing is once the hurricane made landfall, people will forget about the initial (bad) forecast. FEMA and their inevitable bungling of disaster response will take the brunt of the blame.