Now, with its new Public Alerting Assessment, the National Weather Service (NWS) is charting new territory. For the first time in its modern history, it has enacted a holiday shutdown of 24-hour operations at its local forecast offices. The agency is taking this unprecedented step because they are facing a critical staff shortage and funding austerity. Most of these challenges result from policies adopted during the Trump administration and from recent Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) leadership. Severe weather events have spiked this year, with more than 1,200 tornadoes reported across the country as of June 30. Each of these changes poses significant dangers to public safety and jeopardizes the reliability of forecasting.
The NWS’s operational restrictions and inability to fill these roles has left it devastatingly understaffed year round. Only 70 of their 91 weather balloon launch sites have been able to stay open during the height of tornado season. As a result, the agency has lost nearly one-quarter of its key data pillars. Weather balloons, launched at some 1,000 cities worldwide each day, offer unrivaled, invaluable measurements of air pressure, winds, temperature, and humidity. These invaluable sets of observations—the raw data that make up our computer models—are the very bedrock of all electronically generated weather forecasts.
Local forecast offices that have been unable to launch weather balloons serve major metropolitan areas such as New York City, Atlanta, and Portland. On top of that, these cities are frequently hit by extreme weather, so the need for precise forecasting is critical. Staffing and Funding Cuts Congress is opposing staffing and funding cuts with unusual, bipartisan swiftness. Unfortunately, the National Weather Service is still facing a crisis in resource adequacy.
In the face of this crisis, the NWS has stepped up. They, too, are pulling more meteorologists back from research jobs into frontline forecasting roles to staff the gaps. Yet, during times of more extreme and volatile weather patterns, this strategy poses profound threats to the accuracy of weather forecasts.
“The world’s example for weather services is being destroyed,” stated Chris Vagasky, a meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin. His remarks highlight the enormous damage that these cuts could do to our nation’s long-term national weather forecasting capacity.
Furthermore, the NWS has faced other technological failures. Just in May, the key computer system that powers the nation’s weather alerts suffered a multi-day outage. Unfortunately, this disruption further complicated our ability to provide timely updates to the traveling public. This loss comes at the same time as a disappointing budget request for fiscal year 2026. Unfortunately, the proposal calls for a meager NWS budget increase—offset by deep cuts to its research budget.
Meteorologist Suzanne Fortin, who heads the Omaha NWS office, averted from talking about these challenges to stress what the agency is focusing on today. “At the expense of weather balloons, we would rather focus our energy on looking at other data that will allow us to be able to give you the advance prediction that a tornado will occur,” she explained. Fortin continued by stating, “That’s the reason we’re suspending, so we can focus on those life-saving warnings that can keep people safe.”
As severe weather events increase in frequency and intensity, the NWS’s ability to warn us from those disasters continues to be at risk. This includes every living former director of the NWS, all of whom have expressed their concern. They’re worried about “unnecessary loss of life” from lack of forecasting capabilities. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has made it clear that public safety remains a priority: “Under no circumstances am I going to let public safety or public forecasting be touched.”