WASHINGTON (AP) 鈥 As nasty tornadoes popped up from Kansas to Kentucky, a depleted National Weather Service was in scramble mode.
The agency’s office in Jackson, Kentucky, had begun closing nightly as Department of Government Efficiency began hitting. But the weather service kept staffers on overtime Friday night to stay on top of the deadly storms, which in the Jackson office’s forecast area.
It’s a scenario likely to be repeated as the U.S. is on track to see more tornadoes this year than in 2024, which was the second-busiest tornado year on record. Forecasters said there was at least a 10% risk of tornadoes Tuesday for 10.6 million people in parts of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Weather service veterans expressed concern about the agency’s ability to keep up in the face of the cuts.
Rich Thompson, lead operations forecaster at the NWS Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, said the job is getting done. But he acknowledged that staffing cuts have 鈥渕ade it harder on us.鈥
“It has made it hard on the local offices just to make sure that we have all of our important duties covered. But, I mean, most of the people take those important duties seriously, so we鈥檙e going to do what it takes to cover it,鈥 Thompson said. 鈥淚 hope we鈥檙e not in the same staffing situation long term. ... It would be hard to sustain this for months or years.鈥
- Sophie Bates The Associated Press
NWS spokesperson Erica Grow Cei said the Jackson office 鈥渞emained fully staffed through the duration of the event using surge staffing鈥 and had support from neighboring offices.
A leaner weather service is seeing more extreme weather
The Storm Prediction Center had tallied 883 local tornado reports this year as of Monday, which was 35% higher than average for this time of year.
Many former weather service employees, especially those fired by the Trump administration, remain connected to the agency鈥檚 inner workings. They describe an agency that’s somehow getting forecasts and warnings out in time, but is also near the breaking point.
鈥淭hey鈥檒l continue to answer the bell as long as they can, but you can only ask people to work 80 hours or 120 hours a week, you know for so long,鈥 said Elbert 鈥淛oe鈥 Friday, a former weather service director. 鈥淭hey may be so bleary-eyed, they can鈥檛 identify what鈥檚 going on on the radar.鈥
Tom DiLiberto, a weather service meteorologist and spokesman who was fired in earlier rounds of the job cuts, said the situation is like a boat with leaks 鈥渁nd you have a certain amount of pieces of duct tape and you keep moving duct tape to different holes. At some point, you can’t.鈥
As of March, some of the weather service offices issuing tornado warnings Friday and Sunday were above the 20% vacancy levels that outside experts have said is a critical threshold. Those include Jackson, with a 25% vacancy rate, Louisville, Kentucky, with a 29% vacancy rate, and Wichita, Kansas, with a 32% vacancy rate, according to data compiled by weather service employees and
Technologies used to predict tornadoes have significantly improved, but radar can’t replace a well-rested staff that has to figure out how nasty or long-lasting storms will be and how to get information to the public, said Karen Kosiba, managing director of the Flexible Array of Mesonets and Radars (FARM) facility, a network of weather equipment used for research.
鈥淭here really are not enough people to handle everything,鈥 said University of Oklahoma meteorology professor Howard Bluestein, who chased six tornadoes Sunday. 鈥淚f the station is understaffed, that could affect the quality of forecasts.”
Cuts hit in different ways
Former weather service Director Louis Uccellini said budget cuts have drastically , which provide critical information for forecasts. And weather service workers aren’t being allowed to travel to help train local disaster officials for what to do when they get dangerous weather warnings, he said.
Though the number of tornadoes is nearly at a record pace, Thompson and other experts said the tornado outbreak of the last few days is mostly normal for this time of year.
For tornadoes to form, the atmosphere needs a collision of warm moist air from the Gulf of Mexico and storm systems chugging through via the jet stream, the river of air that brings weather fronts from west to east, said Thompson, Bluestein and Harold Brooks of the weather service’s National Severe Storm Laboratory.
鈥淭he moisture that we’re getting from the Gulf of Mexico is a lot more than we used to get,鈥 said Bluestein. 鈥淭hat makes the likelihood that we’re getting a stronger storm higher and that’s pretty unusual.鈥
Temperatures in the Gulf are a couple of degrees warmer than usual for this time of year, according to the weather service.
The connection between climate change and tornadoes is not as well understood as the links between other types of extreme weather such as heavy rainfall and heat waves, experts say.
鈥淯nder the climate change scenario, we鈥檙e kind of supercharging the atmosphere on some days and then actually reducing the favorability on others,鈥 said Ohio State University atmospheric sciences professor Jana Houser.
Scientists are also seeing more tornadoes in January, February, March and other times when it used to be too cold for twisters to form, especially in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee, she said.
More people are also living in harm’s way, Brooks said. That’s why Uccellini and others see increasing risks to people and property.
鈥淲hen you have this kind of threat and you鈥檙e understaffed at some point, something鈥檚 going to slip through the cracks,” Uccellini said. 鈥淚 can鈥檛 tell you when it鈥檚 going to happen.鈥
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Associated Press reporter Isabella O’Malley contributed from Philadelphia.
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