Staring down another above-average hurricane season, America’s weather forecasting and disaster response agencies are more hollowed out than ever before – and that could leave tens of millions of Americans more vulnerable to these massive storms.
Both the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency are entering the season in turmoil, having lost thousands of experts and staff since President Donald Trump took office in January, intent on culling the federal workforce.
Many of those lost have been specialists in weather forecasting, storm response and resilience, among other skills involved in hurricane preparation, prediction and recovery.
The cuts come as human-caused climate change is super-charging storms – causing Atlantic hurricanes to produce heavier rainfall and intensify more rapidly than in previous decades. Destructive Hurricanes Milton and Helene underwent rapid intensification last season before making landfall, for example.
Another above-average hurricane season is in store this year, NOAA announced Thursday morning: 13 to 19 named storms, 6 to 10 of which will become hurricanes, and 3 to 5 of these may grow to major hurricane intensity of Category 3 or stronger. NOAA said they have 70% confidence in this particular outlook.
An average Atlantic hurricane season would be 14 named storms, of which seven become hurricanes and 3 become major hurricanes.
At FEMA, which leads the nation’s disaster response and recovery, current and former officials say repeated calls from Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to “eliminate” the agency have led to internal confusion on what its mission is, and how quickly it should respond to disaster requests from states.
FEMA took two months to approve disaster aid for deadly mid-March tornados that ripped through red states, leading to an outcry from some Republican lawmakers.
“When it’s taking months for a disaster declaration to be granted, the people on the ground could potentially think, well, FEMA is just not going to be here because they’re gone, because the president and the (DHS) secretary got rid of them,” said Deanne Criswell, the former FEMA chief under Biden.
“There’s always been confusion about what FEMA’s role is the response phase of a disaster,” Criswell added. “I think given this conversation, it just creates even greater misunderstanding of, ‘Do they even exist?’”
Burnout = bad forecasts
The Trump administration’s steps to reduce the size of the federal government, which included firings, early retirement incentives and other programs, resulted in more than 560 National Weather Service employees leaving the agency since January. The fear of burnout is high among the remaining forecasters at the agency’s 122 local offices.
“I am worried about staffing at the local offices for hurricane events,” one NOAA employee told CNN, noting the thin staffing at some Gulf coastal offices. They requested anonymity for fear of retribution. “Maybe the first event will be fine, but fatigue will be quite real by peak season. People will do whatever they can to get the job done, but they can’t work around the clock, seven days a week.”
The National Hurricane Center in Miami is fully staffed for the season, but the local offices are responsible for tailoring forecast information and warnings for their areas, and many of them are missing multiple forecasters, technicians and hydrologists.
Some are also missing their chief meteorologists, depriving the staff of the most experienced forecaster and manager on their team.
The risk of burnout increases if multiple hurricanes track over the same parts of the country — something that happened last year.
The NOAA staff member also said the staffing concerns go hand in hand with the prospect that less data may be available for making accurate hurricane forecasts, given recent reductions in daily weather balloon launches around the country.
Such balloons provide crucial data for computer models used to help meteorologists predict the weather, and it’s unlikely low staffing would allow such launches to ramp up to four times a day, which is more typical when a hurricane threatens to make landfall in the US.
“There almost certainly will be less data for the models,” they said. This could threaten the accuracy of hurricane intensity and track forecasts, areas that meteorologists have made gains in during the past decade.
Nobody ‘to make the strategic decisions’
Trump first suggested he might eliminate FEMA in the days after taking office, while touring Hurricane Helene damage in North Carolina. Since then, the agency has been embroiled in chaos and staffing cuts. About 10% of FEMA’s total workforce has left since January, and projections indicate staff loss will increase to 30% by the end of this calendar year.
Departures have included senior officials experienced in managing the federal response to major storms. The acting FEMA administrator was recently fired after he told lawmakers he does not support dismantling the agency, breaking with Department of Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem and other high-ranking DHS officials.
One disaster expert said removing high-level FEMA leaders while shifting more responsibilities to states is “a recipe for disaster.”
“You don’t have anyone there to make the strategic decisions that need to be made in these unprecedented events,” said Wendy Huff Ellard, who leads the disaster recovery team at law firm Baker Donelson. “These things aren’t cookie cutter; there’s really no guidebook.”
A recent internal FEMA review underscored the agency’s lack of preparedness for this year’s hurricane season, CNN reported. The review stated the agency “is not ready” for the June 1 start to hurricane season, noting a general uncertainty around its mission, lack of coordination with states and other federal agencies, low morale and new red tape that will likely slow responses.
“The lack of clarity is not helping anyone prepare,” Huff Ellard said. “I think people are so confused at this point about the process and what’s going to be there and what they should be doing, that it is taking resources away from the preparedness effort.”
At a hearing on Capitol Hill last week, Noem told lawmakers, “there is no formalized, final plan” for restructuring the agency and shifting responsibilities to states.
More recently, FEMA has re-opened training centers to prepare staff for hurricane season and lengthened contract extensions for part-time workers that deploy to areas during disasters. But one FEMA official told CNN they are concerned the preparations are happening too late.
Criswell, the former FEMA head, told CNN one of the agency’s most important functions is coordinating the many other federal agencies that pitch in during disasters, making sure it’s not needlessly duplicating rescue and recovery efforts.
FEMA takes its lead from each state’s emergency management director, Criswell said.
“That’s why FEMA has somebody that is coordinating the federal resources, so you don’t have people just going out there on their own,” she added. “(The Department of Defense) could be doing something that the Coast Guard is doing. Or you’re going to miss critical functions that need to happen.”
Even if states step up, it would be difficult for them to totally replicate the footprint of a federal response.
Even before FEMA and NOAA lost staff, there were not enough resources for storm response and recovery, said Carrie Speranza, president of the International Association of Emergency Managers-USA. But if states must play a larger role, governors may have less incentive to send their mutual aid resources to neighboring hard-hit states.
Speranza said people should not assume this season that first responders and community resilience staff will come to their rescue if they are hit with a major storm.
“It’s all for one, and not one for all. That’s a very different environment especially when you are talking about helping people on their worst day,” she said. “We haven’t had time to adjust. The ‘abolish FEMA’ thing took us all by surprise.”