noaa cutting 25% of the workforce

See this recent AP New story, The US agency that monitors weather will cut another 1,000 jobs, AP sources say

This will add up to about 25% of the entire workforce, which includes the National Weather Service (NWS). I don’t know about you, but if I cut 25% of my staff, I could not maintain the same level of services that I had provided before. And these cuts are across the board. It is not just administrative jobs but also forecasters and technicians that keep the systems running. Not to mention the sciences side of things that look at the impact of climate change on the weather. Did I just say “climate change?” That is right…the federal government has established a lexicon of words that are to be expunged from all federal agency websites. Don’t expect to do a word search for “climate change” and see a federal agency’s website popup anytime soon.

There are those who want to privatize NWS and farm its functions out to commercial forecasting businesses. Check out this previous Disaster Zone Podcast: Forecasting the Weather as a Business which is an interview with their lead forecaster. Even businesses like AccuWeather’s Chief Meteorologist shared that they get data that they use for forecasting the weather from NOAA and the NWS.

Interestingly, I had another Disaster Zone Podcast interview with a disaster researcher from Switzerland earlier this week (this will air in a couple of months). She shared that they depend on NOAA’s data and science for worldwide forecast operations concerning severe weather.

Basically, we are seeing a chip, chip, chipping away of our national capability to detect and respond to hazardous weather events. As local and state emergency managers I guess we might just have to say, “It is what it is.” It feels like we are taking a giant step backward.