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The National Weather Service has been on a hiring spree to make up for a wave of layoffs and retirements amid cuts by the Trump administration last year. Those cuts shrank the service by about 600 people. Offices that conduct hurricane research were also slashed. In a couple weeks when hurricane season starts, the weather service says it will be ready, but some experts worry a brain drain could slow hurricane research. Jenny Staletovich from member station WLRN in Miami reports.
JENNY STALETOVICH, BYLINE: About the same time hurricane season arrives along the Atlantic coast, 11 cities in the U.S. will be preparing to host World Cup soccer matches, with meteorologists posted at stadiums and match events. Cities include Miami and Houston, which sit squarely in the crosshairs for hurricanes.
ROBERT MOLLEDA: We're going to be providing daily briefings to public safety officials and emergency managers.
STALETOVICH: Robert Molleda is the meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service's Miami office. But even with that busy schedule and staff shortages, he's not stressing about hurricane season.
MOLLEDA: Bottom line is we are going to be ready, as ready as we can be for hurricane season.
STALETOVICH: By September, the weather service says it hopes to have hired 450 entry-level meteorologists to make up for the spots vacated last year.
TOM FAHY: You take 600 people and you remove them immediately within a period of 90 days, it has dramatic impact across the entire workforce.
STALETOVICH: Tom Fahy is with the union that represents the meteorologists with the National Weather Service. He says that's an attrition rate normally spread over a decade, not months. But with the recent hires, he says the weather service is now ready.
FAHY: From Cape Cod all the way down the Atlantic Seaboard, we have enough meteorologists in all the offices to properly warn the American public.
STALETOVICH: He says filling positions at these local weather offices is critical. That's because once a hurricane nears land, these offices take over issuing warnings from the National Hurricane Center. They're the ones that send alerts for hazards like tornadoes, flooding and high winds. But the forecast is not so good when it comes to hurricane research. This year, the Trump administration's proposed budget has again called for eliminating some labs.
BEN KIRTMAN: In science, if you stop an activity - you know, you can do that very quickly, and you stop. We're stopping. But to spin it back up can take years.
STALETOVICH: Ben Kirtman is an atmospheric scientist. He sits on the board that manages the National Center for Atmospheric Research. He worries if those cuts happen, along with the brain drain that occurred last year, improvements in forecasting will lag behind.
KIRTMAN: When you lose people, you lose that institution, man, they say - oh, no, Ben, we tried that 10 years ago. It didn't work. Don't bother.
STALETOVICH: And these improvements matter, says James Franklin, who oversaw forecasters at the National Hurricane Center for nearly a decade before he retired in 2017. Because of research from these labs, better satellite systems and other improvements, he says hurricane tracking accuracy is much better.
JAMES FRANKLIN: We basically added two days of predictability to our forecast. The five-day forecast now is about as good as the three-day forecast was 15 years ago.
STALETOVICH: And that gives people and emergency responders more time to prepare. He says the loss of research work won't be obvious right away.
FRANKLIN: So yeah, great, weather service is hiring. But if you cut off the improvements that are coming from the NOAA labs and the cooperative institutes, then you just chop off the improvements that we were likely to see over the next 25 years.
STALETOVICH: In a statement, the weather service says hiring the next generation of meteorologists, along with improvements in technology, will strengthen the capabilities of forecasting offices. For NPR News, I'm Jenny Staletovich in Miami.
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