Gulf forecaster warned for years about NWS cuts. ‘This would have killed him,’ widow says
Experienced meteorologist and hurricane forecaster Rocco Calaci warned for years that the National Weather Service was understaffed and underfunded.
He even predicted what he feared would happen, a possibility now being championed in Project 2025.
“As budget cuts continue, the push will be for privatization of weather services, resulting in everyone paying for weather data,” he said in a December 2020 email to the Sun Herald. “By limiting access to weather data, there will be less need for personnel and the domino effect will take place.”
Calaci died unexpectedly at age 73 in June 2024, the day after he wrote his last tropical newsletter. The Ft. Walton Beach, Florida, resident wanted to keep people safe during hurricane season, which runs June 1 to Nov. 30.
The National Weather Service is under the umbrella of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, a Commerce Department agency with branches that also lead work on climate change, oceans, fisheries, coastal restoration and marine commerce.
NOAA and NWS work underpins the forecasts Americans rely on — whether from a phone app or their local TV meteorologist — to plan activities, and protect their lives and property when storms threaten.
In recent weeks, NOAA has lost 1,300 staff members through layoffs or resignations, with the New York Times first to report over the weekend that the Trump administration wants another 1,000 employees cut from the agency’s workforce of about 12,000.
‘Honest to God, I’m so glad he was not alive for this,” said Leanne Slay-Calaci, Rocco Calaci’s widow. “This would have killed him. The stress of this would have done him in.”
NOAA Hurricane Hunter rehired
Meteorologists and weather watchers took to X to express their dismay over the first round of NOAA cuts in late February. Elon Musk, who bought Twitter in 2022 and changed the name, has been orchestrating federal layoffs and budget cuts through the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
Levi Cowan, a meteorologist who authors the popular weather blog Tropical Tidbits, wrote on X: “My personal mission to bring hurricane science, data, and forecasts to the public would not be possible without the weather observations, doppler radar stations, computer models, hurricane hunter aircraft, and weather satellites provided by NOAA and the NWS.
“Your favorite weather apps, TV meteorologists, and private weather companies would also be unable to function without this data or the civil servants who live and breathe it to synthesize it into public safety information.”
Kerri Englert lost her job as a flight director for NOAA’s Hurricane Hunters, which flies into hurricanes to collect data fed into models that track a storm’s strength and intensity. But, as she had hoped, she was told to return to work this week at NOAA’s Aircraft Operations Center in Lakeland, Florida.
She had been a naval flight officer before transitioning to her “dream job” with NOAA in September 2023. She was let go by email on Feb. 27.
“Trust me, it’s a day I will not forget,” said Englert, who had put in her eight hours and left for an appointment when she received a concerned text from her supervisor. After she checked her email, Englert had to drive back to work, collect her things and turn in her badge.
Ultimately, the Navy veteran and reserve officer told the Sun Herald before her job was restored, short staffing could cost lives and endanger property.
Before being rehired, Englert said flight director staffing was at a critical level for the three planes that NOAA operates. If someone was sick or otherwise unable to fly, 24-hour flight operations during hurricanes couldn’t have continued, meaning less data would have been collected.
She said that, while a few employees were asked to return, “the aircraft operations center and NOAA are still not whole without all individuals, regardless of their positions as aircrew, maintenance, vital support staff, or veteran status.”
Biloxi weather crew military, still working
The layoffs come after NOAA posted its best performance ever in predicting where hurricanes would go during the 2024 season. NOAA continued to be challenged, however, in forecasting rapid intensification.
Manpower has not been reduced for another group of Hurricane Hunters, the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron headquartered at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, because they work for the military.
“Thus, the loss of a NOAA hurricane hunter aircraft because of short staffing will not greatly reduce the overall quantity of flights undertaken,” Jeff Masters, a former NOAA hurricane scientist who later earned a degree in meteorology and co-founded the Weather Underground, wrote in an article for Yale Climate Connections before Englert and a second flight director were reinstated. “However, it will significantly reduce the quality of the data collected, potentially negatively impacting hurricane forecasts.”
Masters pointed out that only NOAA aircraft carry tail Doppler radars that capture 3D images of an entire hurricane every few seconds. The information NOAA provides saves the country far more than the agency’s annual budget of $6.8 billion, he noted, quoting the American Meteorological Society in one of this social media posts:
“As surely as if bombs are being dropped on our cities, we are trashing our economy by trashing science: ‘Estimates of the value of weather and climate information to the U.S. economy exceed $100 billion annually, roughly 10x the investment made by U.S. taxpayers.’ “
Project 2025: Charge for weather info
Meteorologist Calaci wrote about the potential privatization of the National Weather Service before publication of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for governing.
Project 2025 describes NOAA as “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.”
The 900-page manifesto goes on to say: “This industry’s mission emphasis on prediction and management seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable. That is not to say NOAA is useless, but its current organization corrupts its useful functions. It should be broken up and downsized.”
The NWS should “fully commercialize its forecasting operations,” Project 2025 concludes. “Commercialization of weather technologies should be prioritized to ensure that taxpayer dollars are invested in the most cost-efficient technologies for high quality research and weather data.”
Calaci fretted about the budget for NOAA’s weather service and National Hurricane Center long before Project 2025.
In a weather newsletter in September 2020, after NWS radar outages during Hurricanes Sally and Laura, he wrote:
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the people at NWS and NHC are under-manned, under-funded and over-worked. With large budgets cuts already planned for these agencies, I fear for the future.”
This story was originally published March 11, 2025 at 12:00 PM.
