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Trump Administration Wants To Fire 248 Forecasters At the National Weather Service (fortune.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the drain-the-swamp dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: After a year that saw over $300 million in damages from hurricanes, wildfires, and other natural disasters, the Trump administration is proposing significant cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS) and hopes to eliminate the jobs of 248 weather forecasters. The idea, which is part of the 2019 fiscal budget proposal and caught the agency by surprise, is being derided by the NWS's labor union, which says the cuts will impact the reliability of future weather forecasts and warnings. All totaled, the Weather Service faces cuts of $75 million in the initial proposal. Some or all of those cuts could be jettisoned before the bill is voted upon. "We can't take any more cuts and still do the job that the American public needs us to do -- there simply will not be the staff available on duty to issue the forecasts and warnings upon which the country depends," said Dan Sobien, the president of the National Weather Service Employees Organization.

Further reading: The Washington Post

4 of 524 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Trump isn't going far enough by Art+Challenor · · Score: 5, Informative

    Someone needs to mod the parent as funny. I assume it has to be a joke unless there are really people out there who think that, say weather.com, the weather channel, etc. are actually forecasting. They almost all use the NWS forecast, they may add a little to it, but the heavy lifting is done by that government agency.

  2. Re:What did you expect? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    lol,when has a Republican administration ever been "deficit hawks"? If there's one pattern in politics it's that deficits shrink under the Dems and blow out under the GOP.

  3. Re:What did you expect? by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here is an interesting take and it puts the budget into constant dollars. Might be a bit instructive...

    --
    Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
  4. Re:What did you expect? by jbengt · · Score: 5, Informative

    I bet the Military doesn't use the NWS. Neither do most news organizations.

    You would lose that bet. Even if they have additional sources of data, and use their own people (more likely, their own computers) making predictions, both the military and most news organizations use NWS data.