National Weather Service, NOAA firings raise safety concerns for severe weather season
The impact of cuts to NOAA, NWS
FOX 4 meteorologist Ali Turiano explains how local meteorologists work with the National Weather Service and why cuts to NOAA are raising concerns.
Cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the agency that operates the National Weather Service, are raising concerns about how quickly meteorologists could get important weather data.
NOAA cuts
What we know:
Hundreds of forecasters and other federal employees were fired on Thursday as part of the Trump Administration's efforts to cut wasteful spending.
Like other federal agencies, most of the NOAA job cuts were people on probationary status.
The Associated Press confirmed at least 375 people were fired Thursday.
More cuts are expected in the future.
What we don't know:
At this point, we don't know when the next round of cuts will happen.
Reports say the cuts will be in two rounds.
Impact on NWS Fort Worth
Local perspective:
FOX 4 has confirmed at least one technician at the National Weather Service in Fort Worth was fired, reducing the office's technician staff to two people.
There are concerns that our area is too big for just two people to cover, especially with severe weather season around the corner.
"The National Weather Service in Fort Worth, they're not just for North Texas, but parts of Central Texas, too. They only have two technicians now to take care of all of the automated sensors and the 12 transmitters. So we're talking dozens of things these guys do every day," said FOX 4 meteorologist Ali Turiano.
Why you should care:
Meteorologists around the country rely on a partnership with the National Weather Service to present the latest weather data.
With short staffing, it could affect how quickly they can get information to you.
What they're saying:
"All of the data that we get to look at throughout the day, the computer models, those models are running with new data from all of the sensors and all of the weather balloons that [the National Weather Service] put up in the air," said Turiano.
"These are the people responsible for creating your day-to-day weather forecast. This is very clearly not what you want to do if you want to ‘trim the fat.’ This is what you would do if you want to purposefully kneecap a well-functioning agency," said UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain.
The Source: Information on the cuts at NOAA come from the Associated Press. Information on the impact of the cuts comes from interviews with the FOX 4 weather team and a YouTube post from UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain.