California lawmakers are growing increasingly concerned about federal staffing cuts at the National Weather Service, which they say are harming the state’s agriculture industry and putting critical fire operations in jeopardy.
In a letter dated Wednesday and obtained by The Times, both U.S. senators from California, Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, urged the Trump administration to reverse its considerable cuts to the nation’s leading weather agency, which has lost at least 600 employees to layoffs and buyouts this year.
“The safety and lives of millions of Americans as well as the economic success of California depend on weather forecasts from the state’s NWS offices,” reads the letter, which was spearheaded by Schiff and addressed to Howard Lutnick, the Secretary of Commerce, and Laura Grimm, the acting administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the National Weather Service.
“Protecting human lives from severe weather events is not a partisan issue, and it is important that the NWS has the workforce required to meet its core mandate to protect human life,” the senators wrote.
Their letter follows a Times report which found that two of the six NWS offices in California — Hanford and Sacramento — are among the hardest-hit by federal cuts in the nation. The president and his unofficial Department of Government Efficiency have said the cuts will help save taxpayers money and reduce federal waste.
Currently, Hanford is tied with Goodland, Kan., as the NWS office with the highest percentage of meteorologist vacancies in the country, with eight of 13 positions unfilled, or about 62%, according to The Times report, which used data from the National Weather Service Employees Organization. Sacramento is the next worse off, with half of its 16 meteorologist positions currently empty.
The Hanford and Sacramento offices cover much of the Central Valley and Sierra Nevada — among the most fire-prone parts of California — and are responsible for providing extreme weather warnings to more than 7 million people. The offices no longer have enough staff to operate on their own 24 hours a day, The Times found.
In a statement, NOAA spokesperson Erica Grow Cei said the agency is working to fill roles at offices with “the greatest operational need” through a combination of temporary job postings and reassignment opportunities. The agency will also be posting a targeted number of permanent “mission-critical” positions under an exemption to the department-wide hiring freeze to “further stabilize frontline operations.”
“The National Weather Service continues to meet its core missions amid recent reorganization efforts and is taking steps to prioritize critical research and services that keep the American public safe and informed,” Grow Cei said.
The lawmakers and other state officials fear that the staff reductions are not only leaving regional offices in California critically understaffed, but also endangering lives.
“The significant staffing cuts to these NWS offices will affect standard fire weather forecasting and warnings and the safe execution of firefighting efforts, which can have fatal consequences,” the senators wrote.
California is already contending with explosive wildfires that are expected to worsen in the months ahead. There are currently 10 active blazes in the state, including the 80,000-acre Madre fire in San Luis Obispo County — the largest so far this year — according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The year started with a devastating firestorm in Los Angeles, which arrived after days of urgent messaging from the NWS and leveled portions of Altadena and Pacific Palisades.
Such advance weather warnings are a key part of the weather service’s work, including fire weather watches and red flag warnings that not only advise the public of potentially dangerous conditions but also signal state officials to begin positioning resources, according to David Acuña, battalion chief of communications with Cal Fire.
It’s also common for National Weather Service meteorologists to deploy to active fires to provide real-time weather information to crews including wind speeds, humidity and temperature, which all influence a fire’s behavior, Acuña said.
Acuña declined to comment on federal decisions, but noted that Cal Fire crews remain prepared for an active season. According to the agency’s latest seasonal outlook, fire potential is expected to increase steadily through the summer and into September across the state, especially in the southern Sierra and inland areas.
“We are ready to respond, as we always have been, to aggressively attack fires,” Acuña said.
Federal meteorologists also play a key role in California’s $50-billion agriculture industry, said the senators, who noted in their letter that “staffing shortages at these NWS offices may result in direct harm to farmers, economic losses for the state and country, and a less stable food supply.”
In addition to snowpack and precipitation observations, the weather service also offers soil moisture reports, water supply outlooks and temperature forecasts, all of which are useful for farm operations — particularly as climate change makes water supplies in the state increasingly unpredictable. The California Department of Water Resources, for example, publishes water supply forecasts and water resources updates that use NWS data, as does the U.S. Drought Monitor.
California is not the only state grappling with climate-fueled disasters and a shortage of weather forecasters.
In Texas, where a devastating Fourth of July flood along the Guadalupe River in Kerr County killed at least 133 people, officials are also probing whether staff cuts at the agency played a role.
Though the NWS succeeded in issuing flood watches and warnings in advance of that event, its local offices closest to the flooding were short several key positions, documents show. At the Austin/San Antonio office that covers Kerr County, the weather coordination meteorologist — the person responsible for communicating forecasts with the public and the local government — took Trump’s buyout in April, according to Tom Fahy, legislative director of the National Weather Service Employees Organization.
Schiff and Padilla requested that federal officials provide updated vacancy information, details on staffing needs and hiring plans, and effects on fire-related work, farmers and the food supply chain, by July 31.
Times staff writer Rong-Gong Lin II contributed to this report.
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