That office’s warning coordination meteorologist left on April 30, after taking the early retirement package the Trump administration used to reduce the number of federal employees, according to a person with knowledge of his departure.
Some of the openings may predate the current Trump administration. But at both offices, the vacancy rate is roughly double what it was when Mr. Trump returned to the White House in January, according to Mr. Fahy.
Expect a lot more of this all over the country. NOAA and NWS have been gutted by this administration. Studies have been cancelled, staffing is still being cut, satellite data historically gathered by the DoD and provided to NOAA has been cut off making it harder to forecast hurricanes, this admin has even dramatically cut weather balloon launches making it harder to forecast the weather.
The warnings that went out in advance of this particular disaster, the flood warning the day before and the flood emergency alert that night, were possible because of the few weather balloon launches, including a single balloon launched in Texas that showed how saturated the atmosphere was.
Anyone attacking the weather services in the aftermath of this disaster needs to have their ass kicked. This disaster could have been at least partially averted if Trump hadn't gutted NOAA and the National Weather Service. It would have also been a lot better if the idiots in Texas had a method to alert people of flash floods besides posting alerts on Facebook and Twitter hours after the fact. This was not a failing on the part of the weather service. This was a political failing due to federal budget cuts, staff firings, and incompetent emergency management practices in the affected counties.
And mark my words, Trump and the GOP's climate change denialism, and their determination to destroy or hide all evidence of climate change is going to cost a lot of lives in the coming years.
