Weather service faces severe storm threat with shrunken staff. Will South MS notice?
As severe weather rolls in for the weekend and a variety of warnings begin to blanket the Southeastern United States, staff shortages and budget woes at the National Weather Service are very much on the minds of regional meteorologists.
Meteorologist Nick Lilja, who is based in Houston, reminded his Facebook followers that fewer weather balloons are collecting data, and fewer forecasters are reviewing and analyzing data at National Weather Service offices because of layoffs and a hiring freeze.
Lilja’s concerns echo those of other experienced Gulf meteorologists who warned even before Donald Trump took office that the weather service was understaffed and underfunded.
Staffing levels at the world’s premier weather-forecasting agency have taken another hit with Trump’s budget cuts through the Department of Government Efficiency. It’s unclear how many NWS employees have been laid off or resigned.
“When you remove people who are tasked with alerting us to potential incoming danger, as a consequence, you then make it so that you’re more likely to have danger happen without being alerted,” said Lilja, former chief meteorologist at WDAM-TV in Hattiesburg and now owner of a company that provides the public and businesses with weather forecasts through his company, NickelBlock Forecasting.
NWS staffing declining for years
Lilja watched staffing levels decline at the weather service before Trump took office. He’s noticed the declines at NWS offices in Slidell, Jackson and Mobile. The office in Slidell covers South Mississippi and southeastern Louisiana.
“I don’t think they can tell you they are down people, but as someone who is a partner with local offices, I notice these things,” Lilja said. “Someone’s around, then they’re not.”
He said the weather service staff skews older and meteorologists have retired without being replaced. Under the cost-cutting initiative led by major Trump donor and billionaire Elon Musk, probationary employees have been fired. Lilja said that would include meteorologists on a year’s probation after being promoted at the weather service.
Even so, meteorologists in the southeast region are among the best, he said. “The truth is, at the end of the day, I don’t think you’re going to see a storm without a tornado warning on it, period,” Lilja said. “These people are too dedicated, they are too good.”
At worst, he said, there could be a delay in a warning being issued. Running a 24/7 operation during severe weather means the weather service meteorologists will be stretched thin as they constantly monitor radar, with potential for multiple tornadic outbreaks at once. Even if enough meteorologists are on duty, staffing for the next day could become problematic.
Fewer weather balloons also are operational, Lilja said, which means less data going into weather prediction models.
“It’s a bit like a house of cards,” Lilja said. “When you start to pull at strings, when you remove data these models rely on, you remove our ability to accurately forecast things as well as we could.”
This story was originally published March 14, 2025 at 12:58 PM.
