National Weather Service loses 10% of Alaska staff, hampering forecasting around the world

Resignations and firings have resulted in the loss of at least 23 Weather Service employees across Alaska, according to a source affiliated with a union for National Weather Service employees. The person, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, noted the job losses came when the agency is already severely understaffed.

“We live in a state with a lot of really dangerous weather, and we're getting to a point with our staffing where, despite the fact that our meteorologists are very dedicated to the mission, there's only so much that we can juggle,” the person said in an interview. “We've been juggling the responsibilities of a full-staffed office with fewer people for years now, and we're going to get to a point where we just can't do everything if this continues.”

The cuts amount to more than 10% of the National Weather Service Alaska Region’s roughly 200-person workforce, according to figures from an Office of Personnel Management database. Taken together with positions that were already unfilled, roughly 30% of the budgeted positions across the state’s Weather Service offices are now vacant, the source said.

A spokesperson with the Weather Service’s National Press Office, Susan Buchanan, said by email that she could not confirm the specific facts in this report but said “you can consider the NWS union a reliable source.”

Rick Thoman, a climatologist at the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy who spent more than 30 years with the National Weather Service, said the job cuts are already impacting forecasts.

Last month, officials with the agency announced they would indefinitely suspend weather balloon launches from Kotzebue due to staffing issues. Weather balloon stations in Nome and Bethel also saw simultaneous outages in recent days, Thoman said.

The effects went far beyond the volatile Bering Sea region, he said.

“That means that those observations were not available, and that is going to impact every single weather model run in the world,” Thoman said. “Losing those observations means that the quality of those computer models, which all modern forecasting is built on, suffers.”

Weather models depend on a wide variety of observations contributed by organizations across the globe, from surface temperatures and precipitation to satellite measurements of cloud cover. But the three-dimensional view of the atmosphere that weather balloons provide are a key input not only for weather models operated by governments around the world, but also for those operated by private companies, he said.

“Those upper air observations are critical,” he said. When weather balloon sites go offline, models “don't know what's going on in this very dynamic part of the world,” he said.

Thoman said he was also concerned about reported cuts at a sister agency maintaining tide and current gauges and nautical charts, the National Ocean Service. Station maintenance has to be done regularly, he said.

“And when it doesn't, the data quality suffers,” he said.

Across-the-board cuts strike at the heart of the agency’s mission

Roughly 800 newly hired or recently promoted so-called “probationary” employees were fired across the Weather Service’s parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, according to a report from the publication Axios last month.

Meteorologists on probation in Alaska were not uniformly fired, the union source said, though forecasters in the agency’s Pathways program for recent graduates were let go. At least two had been with the agency for more than a year. One had served nearly half a decade, the union source said.

“There was an error with this individual's paperwork, and this individual was fired, along with the rest of the Pathways students,” the source said.

Matthew Eovino, a Weather Service meteorologist in Anchorage, said on social media he was terminated as a result of the federal hiring freeze after more than a year with the agency.

“My conversion was submitted on time, but because of the freeze, it was never processed — leaving me, and many others across the government, unexpectedly out of a job,” he said.

Eovino did not respond to interview requests.

In addition to meteorologists, the source said the lost employees include information technology and electronics staff, administrative assistants and more. Altogether, terminations accounted for at least 10 of the lost Weather Service employees in Alaska, according to the union source. Others, including some employees with institutional knowledge key to the Weather Service’s work, resigned after receiving the so-called “Fork in the Road” email from the Office of Personnel Management offering federal workers what amounts to a buyout.

“I am actually quite worried about our ability to maintain our IT infrastructure because of some of the separations that happened with people taking the Fork,” the source said.

The cuts have “decimated” morale, the source said.

Meteorologists are “dedicated to the mission of protecting life and property. It's a huge responsibility, but it's a passion for these people. They take it home with them,” the source said. “They love tracking the weather. It's their passion, it's their job, it's their hobby.”

But “it's becoming increasingly difficult to focus on that mission when you're worried about getting fired — getting an email in your inbox telling you you have an hour to walk out the door,” they said.

Thoman, the climatologist, said he expects the effect of the cutbacks to compound as time goes on.

“You're going to have fewer people working more,” he said. “You’re going to have burnout. You're going to have stuff be missed.”

And with fewer people maintaining the dozens of automated weather stations across the state and the networks that connect them, Thoman said he expects data outages like the weather balloon stations in Western Alaska to happen more often and last longer.

Lawmakers raise concerns over impact of Weather Service cuts

Political leaders across the state on both sides of the political aisle raised concerns about the Weather Service cutbacks and defended the agency’s work. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski said in a statement that Alaskans from fishermen to firefighters lean heavily on accurate weather forecasts.

“I’m tired of sounding like a broken record, but these cuts will have real consequences for Alaskans. I am definitely bringing this to the administration.” she said.

A spokesperson said Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan “has been fighting against cuts that would undermine Alaskans’ safety or our economy” and said the senator was working to improve aviation safety alongside Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. Sullivan’s spokesperson stopped short of criticizing the Weather Service cuts outright. (NOAA and the Weather Service are housed within the Department of Commerce.)

State House Rep. Alyse Galvin, I-Anchorage, who’s been tracking federal firings amid scant information from official sources, said in an interview she’s concerned about the impact the cutbacks could have on public safety, especially in light of a recent avalanche that killed three skiers near Girdwood.

“We do not even appreciate how important these scientists are to us until some tragedy happens,” she said. “Let's not get there.”

Rep. Sara Hannan, D-Juneau, said in an interview that accurate forecasting was essential to the flow of commerce through Alaska, and that commercial forecasts often don’t reflect reality in the sparsely populated, geographically complex state.

“If you own a tug and barge service, if you own an air service, and you don’t have weather, the most conservative thing to do to protect your asset is not travel,” she said. “That means you’re slowing down goods and services, and that slows down the economy.”

Republican Congressman Nick Begich also called weather data “essential” in a statement, but he said National Weather Service’s “staffing and budget challenges” highlighted the need to leverage third-party data.

“More and more industries are operating through the support of independent forecasting, which continues to advance rapidly with cutting-edge technology and real-time data,” he said.

Project 2025, the conservative blueprint coauthored by Trump budget chief Russell Vought, calls for the breakup of NOAA and for much of the National Weather Service’s work to be privatized. (Notably, the document says the Weather Service “should focus on its data-gathering services,” including things like weather balloon launches and satellite sensing.)

One California startup offering long-duration weather balloons, while mourning the loss of the Kotzebue launch site, offered to provide six months of free data to help the Weather Service fill the gap.

But Thoman, the climatologist, said he was skeptical that private companies could provide comprehensive weather data cost-effectively. The entire Weather Service operates at a cost of roughly $4 per American per year, the Atlantic reported.

“You would be paying an immense amount of money for that,” Thoman said. “Just for what the Weather Service does now at, you know, per capita, a minimal cost for the U.S. taxpayer.”

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