NWS

In the aftermath of catastrophic flooding in the Texas Hill Country, the performance of local National Weather Service offices has become the focus of intense scrutiny. Could NWS offices have better alerted the public to flood dangers? Did federal staffing cuts hinder the service’s ability to do its job?

Democratic legislators in D.C. have already called for investigations, and Texas state lawmakers are planning a special legislative session that will focus, in part, on answering those questions.

But as politicians and outside experts weigh in, the voices of NWS meteorologists themselves typically have been absent from the conversation, possibly because current weather service employees may not feel free to speak publicly.

To fill that void, KUT News reached out to recently retired career NWS meteorologists to learn how they think staffing cuts and hiring freezes have impacted the service’s mission to forecast and warn the public about extreme weather.

While they all said local NWS offices in Texas appear to have performed their duties admirably during the floods, they also said Texas offices have been hindered by staff reductions and the loss of senior staff.

Some painted a picture of local Texas NWS offices operating under severe “brain drain” and moving close to or even over the edge into burnout. They said it will take time and funding to repair the damage caused by recent cuts.

Years of shortages

According to the three former career NWS meteorologists, staffing shortages at the National Weather Service are nothing new.

“The agency, for years, has been slow to hire,” said Jeffry Evans, who recently retired as meteorologist in charge of the service’s Houston/Galveston office after nearly 34 years with the weather service. “We’ve had hiring problems for almost a decade.”

NWS advocates and union representatives have blamed those vacancies on underfunding, and difficulties attracting and retaining talent.

Part of that is due to lack of competitive pay, and part may be due to the demanding nature of work at local weather service offices. Those office are typically staffed around the clock requiring employees to work night shifts and be available on short notice to respond to weather emergencies.

“Every office I’ve been at, we might’ve been one or two short at a time, or maybe sometimes three, possibly four [meteorologists],” said Hector Guerrero, a former manager who finished his 33-year career at the NWS office in San Angelo. Guerrero is famous within the service for coining the flood safety phrase, “Turn around, don’t drown.”

Guerrero said those shortages have traditionally been overcome through the dedication of existing staff, as well as agency processes created to move staff between offices to where they are most needed.

“When I worked in San Angelo, we were without a meteorologist in charge for some time. But again, we covered for him. We were without a forecaster so we had to cover for him,” said Guerrero, who retired in 2021. “It’s what we’re trained to do.”

But that ability to fill in the gaps became further strained at the start of this year, when the Trump administration began pushing new staffing cuts.

Around 100 probationary employees with less than a year’s experience were immediately terminated.

Early retirement packages and other severance deals offered under Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency also depleted the ranks of senior level managers and veteran staffers.

A hiring freeze, only recently lifted, ensured the positions would not be refilled.

‘Random brain drain’

There are 13 local NWS offices serving Texas, each responsible for forecasting and warning the public of extreme weather in regions that sometimes cross state lines.

Victor Murphy, a 45-year veteran of the weather service, said the “random” nature of the staff reductions — based in part on who took severance packages and who was an early-career probationary employee — meant their impacts varied from one field office to the next.

“Some field offices were hardly touched because no one took these buyouts … whereas other offices were decimated,” said Murphy, who himself took early retirement after serving as climate service program manager at the NWS Fort Worth office. “It was just a completely indiscriminate, unplanned random brain drain.”

The weather service lost about 600 employees nationwide. It’s unclear how many of those who left worked in Texas.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees National Weather Service offices, told KUT News it was “unable to provide information on staffing specific to any one local weather forecast office.”

But many offices do list their staff and vacancies on their websites. The National Weather Service Employees Organization, the union that represents NWS workers, also keeps a tally.

Tom Fahy, the union’s legislative director, said one of the most understaffed offices to serve Texas is in Lake Charles, Louisiana. It oversees parts of Southeast Texas and has only 5 out of 9 meteorologist positions staffed, for a vacancy rate of more than 38%.

The Houston/Galveston meteorology staff has a vacancy rate of about 30%.

Murphy and Evans said such shortages are bound to reduce the services that local offices can offer the public.

“You kind of circle the wagon, so to speak,” said Evans, who also took a government severance package this year. “You limit your services down to just your core important stuff when you get short staffed. And [extreme weather] warnings, obviously, are one of the most important things.

In response to questions about staffing shortages, a spokesperson for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said “NWS continues to conduct short-term Temporary Duty assignments (TDYs), and is in the process of conducting a series of Reassignment Opportunity Notices (RONs) to fill roles at NWS field locations with the greatest operational need.”

Former San Angelo meteorologist Guerrero said he agrees well-managed offices could make up for vacancies by pulling in outside help and training employees to fill in on other duties.

But he, too, said the cuts would take their toll.

“We see it happen in football. You lose half your team, you got to rebuild,” he said.

‘Those calls do matter’

Since the weekend’s flooding, it hasn’t just been the number of positions vacant at local NWS offices that has come under scrutiny, but also which positions are vacant.

Because the DOGE severance offers were more attractive to people who could transition more easily into retirement, former staffers told KUT News, that senior managers and veteran forecasters were more likely to leave.

For example, at the time of the floods, the National Weather Service office for Austin/San Antonio, the office responsible for part of the area that flooded, was operating with about a 15% vacancy rate among meteorology staff.

But the office was also working without a science and operations officer or warning coordination meteorologist after both left in April.

KUT News reached out to the warning coordination meteorologist, but has not heard back.

Evans said people in those senior positions are often the ones who help plan emergency communication and response with local, state and federal officials. He said, perhaps just as importantly, they often form relationships with those officials.

“We all know, in a disaster, relationships matter,” said Evans, recalling a phone conversation he had in 2017 with then Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner during Hurricane Harvey.

“Right before the worst of the Harvey rains hit Houston, I got on a personal call with the mayor and his team, because they were kind of questioning: ‘Is this really gonna be this bad?’ Which is a natural question,” Evans said “My answer was, ‘Yes, it’s gonna be bad and historic.”

“Those calls do matter,” he said, but with senior employees absent, he worries they are less likely to happen.

‘Dodged a bullet’

Despite the challenges posed by short staffing and a loss of senior leadership, Evans, Guerrero and Murphy all said they believe local Texas NWS offices performed admirably during the flooding, releasing timely and essential forecasting and emergency warnings.

Courtesy of Victor Murphy

“The dedication and passion and zeal of those left behind [after staff reductions] is simply incredible,” Murphy said. “People came in on their own, worked extra hours, et cetera, to get the job done.”

A review of warnings from the NWS Austin/San Antonio Office appear to back that up. The question of why so many perished in the floods has moved away from when warnings were issued by the service to why people did not receive or heed them.

But, Murphy and Evans said short staffing and leadership vacancies still leave the public less safe and burnout will inevitably take hold of those employees who remain.

Evans’ former NWS office in Houston still shows vacancies for four meteorologists, a warning coordination meteorologist and a science and operations officer.

He said he expects his old position to finally be filled in August — about six months after he left and well into this year’s Atlantic Hurricane season.

“We’ve dodged a bullet up to now, fortunately,” Evans said.

Storms got wetter, funding dried up

While this month’s floods will be remembered as some of the deadliest in Texas history, they are not the only floods this year to take lives in Texas.

Just last month, a massive storm dumped rain on parts of San Antonio. Four inches fell in an hour in an area near the airport, a 1-in-100-year likelihood rain event, according Murphy. The flash flood that accompanied that sudden storm left 13 people dead.

Joey Palacios

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Texas Public Radio

The National Weather Service office that oversees the area where that flood hit, was the same Austin/San Antonio Office that worked to warn people of last weekend’s flood dangers.

“In the space of one month, this office has had to deal with two extreme 100-year-plus [likelihood] rainfall events,” Murphy said. “All while being downsized.”

For him, and others, it’s just another sign that federal funding priorities are heading in the wrong direction, as climate change brings ever more destructive storms.

“How are we going to deal with these extreme events going forward?” he said. “I don’t think cutting staff at weather service offices or eliminating … research facilities is the best way to go about that.”

In the aftermath of the flooding, there are early signs some funding for staffing may be restored.

In testimony before a U.S. Senate committee on Wednesday, President Trump’s nominee to lead NOAA pledged to “ensure that staffing weather service offices is a top priority.”

“It’s a tragic event,” Evans said, “but it does highlight the importance that the National Weather Service has now and will have in the future.”