National Weather Service Worker Reminds ‘We Are Here To Protect Lives’ After Mass Firings

A worker at the National Weather Service is cautioning about the potential devastating consequences of recent mass firings at the agency when the next natural disaster strikes.

“I think people are nervous and very scared to see what happens next,” a general forecaster at the agency told JS. “Hurricane season really starts to pick up midsummer, and we’re looking at a potentially — very unfortunately — active season coming ahead.”

The employee, who has requested anonymity over fears of retaliation, was referring to last week’s mass firings of federal probationary workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the NWS. More than 800 workers, including weather forecasters, scientists, and technicians, were fired.

Thousands of federal workers have already been fired since President Donald Trump took office. Unelected billionaire Elon Musk, who now heads the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, has vowed to gut the federal government of its power and much of its workforce.

That includes perhaps crippling a critical government service tasked with keeping the public informed of dangerous weather events.

“Everything people see on TV or hear from The Weather Channel, all that information comes from the National Weather Service,” the employee said. “The alert popping up on your phone saying there’s a tornado warning, that comes from us. We’re the ones behind the scenes that you may not see.”

As a general forecaster, the source said, their job includes releasing weather balloons to collect vital data and tracking data in real-time from the Doppler radar during severe weather events. Among the firings were electrical technicians whose job is to fix the radar if it stops working.

“There’s so many different parts of the National Weather Service, and everyone is essential to making sure it can function,” the source said.

At an agency that a congressional analysis found to be understaffed last year, the cuts to the NWS could jeopardize its future efficiency. The NWS operates more than 120 offices across six regions and is staffed 24 hours a day, every day of the year.

“One office already does so much that having to help other offices is going to become so much more work,” they said. “I think everyone is worried about what this is leading to, and it’s quite intimidating and scary.”

Keith Meier, who worked nearly three decades for the NWS in Montana, echoed a similar concern to news station KTVQ.

“I’m really worried [that], especially in Montana, we would dispatch a meteorologist to support wildfire-fighting efforts across the state, and we would have to backfill those positions in our office,” Meier said.

Adding to the low morale at the NWS was a directive from Trump to root out diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. That included removing Slack channels such as “#women” and “#people-with-disabilities,” a screenshot shared with JS showed.

And last month, Musk issued a Saturday afternoon email to more than 2 million federal workers demanding they list what they accomplished in the previous week or face termination. The demand led to mass confusion, including questions about who would sift through the emails and who would ultimately determine a worker’s worth.

Trump then mocked the nation’s civil servants in a social media post. The president posted a meme of the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants looking at a list of what he accomplished. The list included “Cried about Trump” and “Cried about Elon.”

“[Trump and Musk] are laughing at us on social media, while I come in every day to do my duties,” the source said. “Why should I be sitting here proving my worth to someone who’s making fun of us with a SpongeBob SquarePants tweet?”

Musk’s team sent another email to federal workers last week demanding they again list what they got done and were told they should expect to send an email every week going forward. NOAA’s Vice Admiral Nancy Hann sent a separate email to employees telling them to send the list to their supervisors.

“The guidance remains the same as last week to please submit to your first-line supervisor a list of 5 bullet points relating to your activities from the previous week,” the email, obtained by JS, said in part.