Report: NWS Faces Critical Staffing Shortages

The National Weather Service (NWS) is grappling with severe staffing shortages, prompting the agency to offer to cover moving expenses for employees willing to relocate to understaffed offices, according to internal notices obtained by The Washington Post. 

The shortages have forced several offices to halt 24-hour operations, a significant setback for an agency dedicated to preparing a “weather-ready” nation.

The NWS aims to fill 155 vacancies by May 27, including critical forecasting roles in coastal Texas and Louisiana, where the Atlantic hurricane season looms just weeks away. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the NWS’s parent agency, is also urging meteorologists to transfer to offices in Alaska and the northern Plains, including Nebraska, Wyoming, and South Dakota.

Four forecasting offices—in California’s Central Valley, western Kansas, and eastern Kentucky—are so understaffed that they lack meteorologists for overnight shifts, according to the National Weather Service Employees Organization, a union representing NOAA staff. 

Offices in Wyoming, Michigan, Oregon, and Alaska may soon face similar constraints, the union warned.

This raises concerns that without transfers or new hires, more offices will struggle to monitor weather threats, issue aviation forecasts, and launch weather balloons around the clock, according to current and former NWS officials who spoke anonymously due to lack of authorization.

The crisis highlights the impact of the Trump administration’s policies, which have reduced the NWS workforce. Approximately 500 employees have been fired or taken early retirements this year, shrinking a staff that previously exceeded 4,200, the officials noted. “For most of the last half century NWS has been a 24/7 operation — not anymore thanks to Elon Musk,” Tom Fahy, legislative director for the union, wrote in an email.