More than a third of these offices have one or more unfilled leadership positions, which include chief meteorologist, hydrologist, operations officer and coordinating officer.
Some offices in flash flood “hot spots” – areas that can be quickly inundated by intense rainfall – don’t even have a chief meteorologist. That includes offices in southern Texas, where a flash flood on the Fourth of July killed more than a hundred people, and southern New Mexico, where flooding on July 8 killed three people.
Elsewhere in the Mountain West, forecast offices are also short-staffed in eastern Nevada, northern Idaho, southern Wyoming, southern Colorado, eastern Utah, and western Montana, according to the New York Times’ analysis.
In all, the weather service lost nearly 600 positions this year after cuts ordered by the Trump administration. There are 74 vacancies in leadership roles alone, which is more than double the amount compared to last year.
“As a national priority, we should be looking at prioritizing getting some of these positions filled as soon as possible,” said Alan Gerard, a former meteorologist for the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Severe Storms Lab.
Gerard said that severe storm forecasts and warnings will always be a priority for short-staffed offices.
“But,” he continued, “that means that some of the other things that the weather service does that are really important, like preparedness and working with emergency management and broadcast meteorologists, some of those activities are just going to naturally fall by the wayside.”
The National Weather Service is in the process of hiring about 125 employees across the U.S. But with the agency currently down 600 positions, many offices will still likely remain under stress, Gerard said.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
