Emergency hiring plans are underway in an effort to keep two Central Valley weather stations fully staffed in the wake of federal budget cuts.
The National Weather Service’s Sacramento and Hanford offices have been operating for months with reduced staff. California legislators have issued dire warnings about the service reductions, calling the cuts “the beginning of a public safety crisis.”
Hundreds of weather service employees have left the agency under cost-cutting orders from the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the union that represents the National Weather Service, said that nationally, the agency is short 500 positions, in addition to the 600 employees who retired or took buyouts this year.
The vacancies mean offices are not maintaining 24/7 operations, with night shifts often being covered by other regional offices or left completely unstaffed, Fahy said. The Sacramento NWS office posted on social media in April that it would have “limited monitoring and posting” amid the cuts.
In May, climate leaders warned that the cuts could be catastrophic for emergency responses to floods, wildfires and severe storms.
That same month, five former directors of the National Weather Service published an open letter opposing cuts to the agency, which is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“Our worst nightmare is that weather forecast offices will be so understaffed that there will be needless loss of life,” the letter stated.
Two months later, when deadly floodwaters inundated Texas, experts say staff shortages may have complicated forecasters’ abilities to coordinate responses with local emergency management officials.
After the Texas flood, which killed at least 136 people, including more than three dozen children, state officials were critical of the National Weather Service, saying forecasts underestimated the rainfall. The White House has said that NWS cuts had no bearing on the agency’s ability to forecast the storms.
Fahy, however, said the San Antonio office did not have two crucial positions staffed at the time of the flood on July 4: a permanent science officer and a warning coordination meteorologist. The staffers in those roles conduct trainings, implement technology and coordinate with the media.
Those types of open positions also plague Northern California. Fahy said in late July there were 11 vacancies among the 29 staff positions at the NWS’s Sacramento office, including eight unfilled meteorologist roles. Three technical staff vacancies — an observing program lead, or OPL, an assistant electronic systems analyst and an administrative assistant — are also leaving gaps, he said.
California’s elected officials have continued to call on Washington to reverse the cuts. In late May, U.S. Rep. Josh Harder and 22 other California congressional representatives sent a letter to the heads of the Department of Commerce and NOAA, urging the reinstatement of terminated workers and the lifting of the federal hiring freeze for the state’s National Weather Service offices.
“These service reductions represent the beginning of a public safety crisis with potentially catastrophic consequences if the NWS is unable to retain the staff necessary to maintain around-the-clock weather monitoring in California,” the letter stated.
“Slashing staffing in half at the offices responsible for predicting wildfires, atmospheric rivers, and natural disasters is unacceptable, puts thousands of lives at risk, and does nothing to increase government efficiency.”
More recently, California senators voiced their concerns as well. In a July 16 letter to the heads of Commerce and NOAA, Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla said the Sacramento and Hanford offices were the hardest hit by DOGE staffing reductions among California’s six NWS stations. They said the Sacramento office has a 50% vacancy rate and the Hanford office has a 61.5% vacancy rate, one of the worst in the country.
“Understaffing has forced these offices to cut their hours of operation and limit forecasting and weather warnings,” the letter stated. “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. 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.”
A spokesperson for the Sacramento office referred all questions regarding staffing to the weather service’s public affairs department, which declined to answer how many positions had been cut. Instead, the department provided a statement attributed to Kim Doster, the communications director for NOAA.
“The National Weather Service continues to meet its core mission of providing life-saving forecasts, warnings, and decision support services to the public, our partners and stakeholders,” the statement said.
The vacancies at the California offices coincide with peak wildfire season during the height of summer. Last year, more than 1 million acres burned across California. And while no major fires have erupted in San Joaquin County or the Central Valley this year, spot fires have been popping up for months.
It remains unclear whether staffing improvements may be on the horizon.
The National Weather Service in June announced plans to “stabilize” the department. Erica Grow Cei, a spokeswoman for the National Weather Service, said “a targeted number” of permanent positions would soon be advertised.
“NOAA leadership is taking steps to address those who took a voluntary early retirement option,” she said in an emailed statement to Stocktonia.
NWS continues to use what Grow Cei called “short-term temporary duty assignments” and is in the process of conducting a series of “reassignment opportunity notices” to fill roles at NWS field locations with the greatest operational needs.
“Critical field positions will soon be advertised under an exception to the departmentwide hiring freeze to further stabilize frontline operations,” she said.
The stabilizing efforts were approved by the White House more than two months ago, Fahy said, but there hasn’t been much progress, he added.
“We got zilch,” he said, noting that staffing challenges predate the current presidential administration. Fahy said during the Bush and Obama administrations, managers’ hiring abilities were limited and efforts to centralize the agency created bureaucratic roadblocks.
The National Weather Service recently posted two openings for electronics technicians on the USAJobs.gov website. Additional roles for meteorologists, hydrologists and physical dcientists are expected to post in the coming weeks, according to a spokesperson.
It was unclear whether the positions would support staffing at the Sacramento and Hanford offices.
Fahy said once jobs are posted, it takes nine to 18 months to get a person in place.
“The NOAA Office of Human Capital Services is a bureaucratic Death Valley, where job applicants go to die,” he said. “It’s a stain on the credibility of the National Weather Service, which has been a 24/7, 365-day operation since its beginnings.”
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