The National Weather Service is moving at a snail’s pace to rehire hundreds of positions laid off or cut by the Trump administration, with about 80 final job openings accepted for meteorologists, hydrologists and other professional staff.
The agency received permission to add a total of 450 jobs in late July after DOGE cut about 550 jobs earlier this year. The decision to allow the new hires came after members of Congress and the public expressed concerns about how NWS staffing cuts would impact public safety.
The hiring delay means the National Weather Service is heading into an even more severe storm season, leaving more than a dozen forecast offices to make do with severe staffing vacancies and potentially compromising the accuracy of forecasts and warnings during powerful winter storms.
Similar concerns were raised before hurricane season. The hurricanes, including three Category 5 storms, were lucky to avoid making landfall in the United States.
“The administration is trying to put out the fire it started,” said Rick Spinrad, who led NOAA during the Biden administration. “NWS’s 450 jobs won’t even cover the entire shortfall.”
“Also, let’s not forget the fact that even if the NWS could hire 450 people tomorrow, there is little chance that they would have access to the centuries of experience that their predecessors had,” he said.
It takes 13 meteorologists to staff a weather forecast office 24/7, but many NWS facilities currently have just 10 or 11, said Tom Fahey, legislative director for the NWS Employees Organization, a union representing government employees. For example, the National Weather Service in Goodland, Kansas, is short of eight meteorologists, according to statistics compiled by Fahey.
He said the NWS offices in Rapid City, North Dakota and Cheyenne, Wyoming, are also short seven to eight meteorologists, and even the new hires are not filling them all. It takes time to move talent around the country and match the skill sets of people in specific gaps in expertise.
Winter storms can be deadly, and NWS staffing shortages can compromise forecast accuracy and delay warnings, experts say.
“We are concerned that the timing, accuracy, and delivery of forecasts, monitoring, and warnings may deteriorate to the point where they endanger life and property,” Spinrad said. “I anticipate one or more severe winter storms where emergency managers, the Department of Transportation, and hospitals will be less prepared and forewarned than they have been historically.”
“This is not a ‘condemnation’ of the quality or professionalism of NWS employees, but there just aren’t enough of those heroic public servants to get the job done.”
There is still one forecast office in Hanford, California, but it is understaffed to operate 24/7, said a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) official who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation. NWS is part of NOAA within the Department of Commerce.
Other NWS offices do not have enough staff for the standard twice-daily weather balloon launches, so they may be reduced to once a day or not at all. According to NOAA officials, nine NWS offices are currently launching balloons once a day.
This can have a significant impact on forecasts, as the temperature, humidity, pressure and wind measurements from these balloons are fed directly into computer models that forecasters use as guidance in issuing forecasts. Missing upper-air weather data from the ground to about 40,000 feet can make these models less reliable.
According to NOAA officials, the weather service is accelerating its hiring process and is seeing a sharp increase in applications for each open position. They said the NWS continued to select candidates during the 43-day government shutdown, with the highest priority being to increase its workforce to ensure it can carry out its mission of protecting lives and property.
NOAA officials said the agency has announced more than 180 positions so far and will continue hiring next year to fill 450 positions. But at that point, the NWS will still be smaller than it was at the start of the second Trump administration.
NOAA spokeswoman Kim Doster told CNN that the NWS is “well-prepared for the upcoming winter season, with the right personnel in place to fulfill our mission of providing essential services at all levels to predict weather hazards and keep communities informed.”
“Following the voluntary redeployment of 45 employees into vacant NWS field positions last summer, NWS continues to expand the agency’s front-line talent pool by hiring for mission-critical positions where increased staffing levels are deemed beneficial,” Doster said.
The agency said it plans to hire the remaining staff by the end of fiscal year 2026.
