Federal cuts may impact how Texans get their weather news

TEXAS – KUT Radio reports the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has laid off hundreds of employees as part of a federal workforce reduction initiative under the Trump administration. According to the agency’s former head of research, these cuts could reduce the accuracy of weather forecasting in Texas, a state frequently affected by severe weather events. According to Craig McLean, former assistant administrator for research at NOAA who says he’s been in contact with people “at all levels of the agency,” between 600 to 800 people were fired last week, including meteorologists and staff from the National Weather Service (NWS), a subsidiary agency of NOAA. McLean says these firings could lessen the accuracy of severe weather warnings, prevent storm hunters from making routine flights, and overburden “the existing number of forecasters who are on the job,” leading to “greater risk for the American people.”

“When the system is stressed, the quality of those forecasts is then put in jeopardy and the ability of the public to take early and appropriate action will be compromised,” McLean said. “We’re diminishing the capacity, the skill level and we’re also delaying the technical delivery of many advances that we know we can be producing.” Texas is no stranger to devastating weather events. In 2017, Hurricane Harvey made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane, causing catastrophic flooding in Houston. The storm left more than 100 people dead and about $125 billion in damages. In 2021, an arctic blast knocked out power for millions throughout the state – more than 200 people died. Hurricane Beryl resulted in more than 40 deaths in the Houston area last summer. Before all of these storms, the NWS provided up-to-date forecasts hours, and even days, in advance – a practice that’s now being threatened by recent federal firings, according to McLean. This could impact local news forecasts as well. Meteorologists primarily rely on NWS data, along with other government and private sources. The layoffs come amid a broader wave of federal job cuts under billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has moved to reduce federal staffing across multiple departments, citing budget and efficiency concerns. Thousands of government employees have already been fired.