Associated Press
Hundreds of weather forecasters and other federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration employees on probationary status were fired Thursday, lawmakers and weather experts said.
Federal workers who were not let go said the afternoon layoffs included meteorologists who do crucial local forecasts in National Weather Service offices across the country.
Cuts at NOAA appeared to be happening in two rounds, one of 500 and one of 800, said Craig McLean, a former NOAA chief scientist who said he got the information from someone with first-hand knowledge. That’s about 10% of NOAA’s workforce.
The first round of cuts were probationary employees, McLean said. There are about 375 probationary employees in the National Weather Service — where day-to-day forecasting and hazard warning is done.
The firings come amid efforts by billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency to shrink a federal workforce that President Donald Trump has called bloated and sloppy. Thousands of probationary employees across the government have already been fired.
Rep. Grace Meng, a New York Democrat, released a statement saying: “Today, hundreds of employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), including weather forecasters at the National Weather Service (NWS), were given termination notices for no good reason. This is unconscionable.”
Meng added: “These are dedicated, hardworking Americans whose efforts help save lives and property from the devastating impacts of natural disasters across the country. This action will only endanger American lives going forward.”
Rep. Jared Huffman, a California Democrat and ranking minority member in the House Natural Resources Committee, also said “hundreds of scientists and experts at NOAA” were let go.
Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, said on social media that the job cuts “are spectacularly short-sighted, and ultimately will deal a major self-inflicted wound to the public safety of Americans and the resiliency of the American economy to weather and climate-related disasters.”
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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
6 comments
Michael K
February 28, 2025 at 8:27 am
Who needs accurate weather when one of the co-presidents has a Sharpie?
Anne Sillari
February 28, 2025 at 9:21 am
Interesting that the Always Proggy news service chooses to quote a couple of Democrats to flesh out its story. Conflict is always the key.
Merely because these employees are scientists does not qualify them for lifetime employment if their services were duplicative, ancillary or related to work that is of no longer as valuable as it may once have been.
I knew someone a long time ago who was an air traffic controller. The FAA eventually eliminated his position and that of thousands of other controllers when computers assumed the biggest share of the work he did and when that work was gathered into a few central offices. Suffice it to say, aircraft did not start falling out of the sky.
When I was young, I wanted to study meteorology. The college said they would be glad to have me but that I would not be likely to get a job when I graduated. Why? My race. The only agency who hired forecasters at that time was the federal government and they hired only according to affirmative action. Unfortunately for me and my future, I was not one of the affirmative ones.
JD
February 28, 2025 at 10:16 am
I find it hard to believe that a college recruiter or someone within that office would tell you because you weren’t a minority, that your chosen field of study would not yield a job.
However, to address your point of duplicative services – were they? Or was it merely a reduction in force based on salary expenditures and not need? We are not being shown if these reductions are cutting into bone to merely lose weight of flesh or if these individuals services were not needed.
Skeptic
February 28, 2025 at 10:21 am
So. . . because you didn’t get your dream job we should stop getting a heads-up on approaching hurricanes?
TruthBTold
February 28, 2025 at 11:21 am
Non-sequitur. These layoffs will have no effect on hurricane forecasting, or at least the ability to forecast them. Forecasting is 90% AI these days.
TruthBTold
February 28, 2025 at 10:25 am
What, there were 13,000+ forecasters at NOAA? That’s ridiculous in today’s age of computational weather forecasting. Need to cut about 5,000 more.