Almost half of the offices of the National Weather Service have 20%vacation rates, and experts say it’s a risk

Washington (AP) – After the Trump administration job cutsAlmost half of the offices of the forecasts for national weather services have unaccompanied rates of 20% – twice that of ten years ago – as bad weather through the heart of the country, according to the data obtained by the Associated Press.

Detailed vacancy data for the 122 meteorological offices show that eight offices are missing more than 35% of their staff – including those of the Arkansas where tornadoes and tornmen have struck this week – according to statistics promined by the crowd by more than a dozen employees of the National Weather Service. Experts have said that repair rates for 20% or more equivalent to a critical failure and that 55 of the 122 sites reach this level.

Meteorological offices emit daily routine forecasts, but also emergency warnings per minute during epidemics of dangerous storms such as tornadoes that killed seven people This week and “catastrophic” floods that continue throughout the weekend. This week’s weather service has recorded at least 75 tornadoes and 1,277 bad weather preliminary reports.

Due to staff shortages and continuous bad weather, meteorologists from the Louisville office could not investigate the damage caused by the tornado on Thursday, which is traditionally done immediately to help improve forecasts and future warnings, the local meteorological office in local Kentucky media said. Meteorologists had to choose between the collection of information that will help in the future and the warning of an immediate danger.

“This is a crisis situation,” said Brad Colman, a former president of the American Meteorological Society who was the meteorologist in charge of the Seattle Bureau of the Meteorological Service and is now a private meteorologist. “I am deeply concerned about the fact that we inevitably lose lives following additional risk due to this short circuit.”

Former National Weather Service chief Louis Ucnellini said that if the figures were correct, that’s a problem.

“No one can predict when no office is stretched if thin that it will break, but these figures would indicate that many of them are there or are getting closer, especially when you take these large segments of the country faced with threats coming in the opposite direction of violent time, flooding the rains while others are confronted with significant risk of fire,” said Uccellini in an e-mail.

The vacancy numbers were compiled in an informal but complete effort of meteorological services after the cuts led by the Ministry of Elon Musk’s government efficiency. They checked the levels of individual office staff and examined how they compare themselves to the past. The endowment levels, including vacancies, are detailed and crossed by offices, regions, posts and past trends, with special notes on the possibility of making them to fill them.

The AP, after obtaining the list from a source outside the weather service, sought to check the figures by calling individual weather offices, checking the lists of online personnel and interviewing other employees not involved in the data collection effort. Workers’ data sometimes varied slightly from the data indicated on weather services, although employees have said that they could be obsolete.

Representative Eric Sorensen, Democrat in Illinois and the only meteorologist in Congress, said his office independently obtained data and that he has checked parts with meteorological professionals whom he knows in the Midwest weather services, which are called MDGs. The Davenport-Quad cities office near his home has a rate of ignorance of 37.5%.

“They make heroic efforts. Just with what happened the other day with the Tornado epidemic, the epidemic of a killer tornado, I saw an incredible work done by the WFOS around Memphis and to Louisville. An incredible job that saved people ‘lives,” said Sorensen on Friday. “In the future with these types of cuts, we cannot guarantee that people will be as safe as they are.”

“I am incredibly worried because it affects everyone in all parts of the country,” said Sorensen, noting the potential of severe storms Friday in the original district of the president of the Mike Johnson Chamber near Shreveport, in Louisiana, where the data show a 13%vacancy rate, well below the southern average and the rest of the country.

Employee data, which dates back to 2015, showed that in March 2015, the overall vacancy rate was 9.3%. Ten years later, on March 21, he was 19%.

The weather service did not immediately respond to a request for comments.

Some northern and central stations – such as Rapid City, southern Dakota, with a 41.7%vacuum rate, Albany, New York, 25%, Portland, Maine, with 26.1%and Omaha, Nebraska, with 34.8% Launch of the weather balloon That said, provide vital observations for specific forecasts.

Vacant posts go beyond meteorologists who make forecasts. Twenty-three offices are without the responsible meteorologist who oversees the office. Sixteen have vacant posts in the crucial employment of a warning coordination meteorologist who ensures that emergency officials and the public are preparing for weather disasters coming in the opposite direction. The Houston office, with a 30%vacuum rate, is missing the two highest positions, according to data and the own office website.

Houston has so much damage caused by floods, hurricanes and even a derecho that “their numbers (damage) are through the roof,” said Bernadette Woods Placky, chief meteorologist for central climate and former television meteorologist.

“National Weather Service employees will always do everything possible to keep people in safety and prepared. It’s just more difficult and it puts life in danger,” said Placky. “This period of the year and in this situation, it is at this time that the season of serious weather conditions culminates and that we are heading towards the greatest extreme season with forest fires, with hurricanes, with extreme heat, which is the deadliest of all extreme time.”

A head of the meteorological service office, who asked not to be identified due to fears of job loss, said that the lack of technicians to repair the radar and other necessary equipment could be dangerous in an extremely dangerous way.

“People are looking back” to face the lack of staff, said the chief meteorologist. “The burden will kill us.”

Professor Victor Gensini and others, professor of atmospheric sciences in the North, and others, compare himself to stretched cracks with air security cracks.

“The question becomes, which falls through the meshes of the net because they are busy doing other things or short,” said peopleini. “Maybe they cannot answer the phone to take a critical weather report that happens. Perhaps there are so many storms in the counties for which they are responsible that they cannot physically issue warnings for each storm because they do not have enough people working on the radar.”

“These are all theoretical concerns, but it’s a bit like when you read planes disasters and how they occur,” said peopleini. “It’s the risk waterfall, right?” This is the composition, as the pilot was tired. The pilot missed the signal. “

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This story has been corrected to delete a mention of Kentucky among states with an office at more than 35% of the vacation rate; His vacation rate of the Louisville office is 29.2%. He also corrected the spelling of the surname of Brad Colman.

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