Forecasting Cuts Leave Some Worried For Hurricane Season

This article is part of The State of Science, a series featuring science stories from public radio stations across the United States. This story, by Emily Jones, was originally published by WABE in partnership with Grist.

Many in Georgia are still recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Helene last fall.

Now, firings and funding cuts at the National Weather Service and other agencies have some experts worried about accurate forecasts heading into the next hurricane season, which begins June 1.

Hundreds of workers have been fired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, including meteorologists at the Weather Service. More cuts by the Trump administration are reportedly on the way.

“The forecast is not going to be as accurate because it won’t have as much information in it,” said Chuck Watson of ENKI research in Savannah, who studies disaster preparedness and response.

He said he’s already seeing the impact of the firings, with the erosion of systems that weather experts rely on. “Now, going forward, it’s going to get progressively worse because, again, systems fail, they’re not funded to replace it, or they don’t have the people to replace it,” he said.

Forecasters, Watson said, depend on information from lots of sources: NASA and Department of Defense satellites, Federal Aviation Administration weather stations at airports, Army Corps of Engineers and U.S. Geological Survey flood gauges and international weather stations maintained by USAID. Many of those agencies are facing their own cuts, too, which he said will also have an impact on forecasting.

“It’s like a fabric or a carpet. You start picking at it like my cat does, you start pulling that thread out, before long you’ve got this big rip in the carpet and a big mess,” Watson said.

NOAA declined to discuss personnel matters but said in an emailed statement that it remains dedicated to “providing timely information, research and resources.”

“We continue to provide weather information, forecasts and warnings pursuant to our public safety mission,” a NOAA spokesperson wrote.

Risk of ‘fuzzier’ forecasts

Watson said even small declines in accuracy can have a big impact.

In the Southeast, where hurricanes are a major concern, forecast accuracy is critical because the precise track of a hurricane can make the difference between an expensive, stressful evacuation and staying put.

Georgia has avoided unneeded evacuations in recent decades, Watson said, because officials have been confident in the forecast, knowing, for instance, that the storm would stay far enough offshore to keep residents safe.

“If the forecasts get fuzzier, you’re going to have more evacuations,” he said. “Now, OK, you’ve got to evacuate because you can’t be sure that storm is not going to hit you.”

The emergency managers who handle those evacuations are also frustrated by the sudden cuts and contradictory announcements, according to Lynn Budd, the president of the National Emergency Management Association.

“We’re planners. We like to plan,” she said. “We like to know what’s going to happen and how do we prepare for it.”

Frozen funds

The concerns for emergency managers go beyond forecast and planning uncertainty.

State emergency management agencies serve as a middlemen, delivering federal funding to cities and counties for disaster preparedness and recovery. Typically, municipalities apply to their states for reimbursement, and the state agencies in turn get reimbursed by FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security.

But currently, those grants are frozen, Budd said.

“It’s really the whole system that is put on hold right now,” Budd said. “And that’s very concerning to us as we have grants that are obligated to us and we hope those will be released or taken off hold sometime soon.”

Watson, meanwhile, is concerned the cuts to forecasting and weather data collection are a step toward privatization.

He said that move has been attempted before, and it failed.

One reason, he said, is some services that are essential to local residents might not be deemed profitable by a business.

“A private company’s not going to put a gauge on the Ogeechee River or on Lazaretto Creek,” Watson said, naming two smaller waterways on Georgia’s coast. For nearby residents, though, such gauges are critical in the event of a flood.

“It’s actually a responsibility of government to do these kinds of things,” Watson added.