A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
The weather forecast may be in trouble because of cuts to the federal government. That's the message from all five living former directors of the National Weather Service in an open letter this month. NPR's Alejandra Borunda tells us what that could mean for you.
ALEJANDRA BORUNDA, BYLINE: When Elbert Joe Friday was a kid, there was a show on TV called "Dragnet." The main character was a hard-boiled LA detective called Joe Friday.
ELBERT JOE FRIDAY: That was the main show when I was a 14-year-old kid. And as a result of that, I got stuck with the name Joe, and I've enjoyed it. So I've kept it ever since.
BORUNDA: The detective's catchphrase?
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "DRAGNET")
JACK WEBB: (As Joe Friday) All we know are the facts, ma'am.
BORUNDA: Friday took that to heart. He became a meteorologist, went to the Air Force, and eventually became the head of the National Weather Service in the 1980s to '90s. It's an organization that is always looking for the facts about the nation's weather. But those facts? Friday says they're getting harder to find because of the Trump administration's cuts to the federal government.
FRIDAY: We have 30 offices across the country now without the meteorologist in charge. That's out of 122.
BORUNDA: Dozens of technicians who service key infrastructure, like the weather radar instruments, have been fired without cause or pushed into buyout or retirement. People who work on the Hurricane Hunter airplanes that fly into storms to make the forecast more accurate? Many of them are gone, too. The organization was already understaffed. Now it's about 10% below its Biden-era staffing and roughly 30% below full staffing, the lowest in decades.
FRIDAY: The loss of these people, kind of at random with the way it's been done, has left the organization's personnel picture almost like a Swiss cheese.
BORUNDA: Louis Uccellini is another former Weather Service director who signed the letter. Like Friday, he served under presidents of both parties. And he says he's concerned going into the nation's busy weather season.
LOUIS UCCELLINI: We're starting to see the fraying, the pulling apart, actually, of this collaborative relationship. And I'm worried about it. I can't tell you exactly when it's going to snap, but I'm not going to be surprised when it happens now.
BORUNDA: Some of the fears are still theoretical, but others have become real. Weather offices get key data about the atmosphere from giant balloons with electronics on them. About a hundred offices nationwide launch the balloons twice a day. The data they collect helps scientists understand wind fields and storm potential. But a growing number of offices are down to one or zero balloons a day because of staff cuts.
ALAN SEALLS: So we're getting basically 10% less weather data for what's going on above the ground.
BORUNDA: That's Alan Sealls. He's the president-elect of the prestigious American Meteorological Society, and he was a beloved broadcast meteorologist for 37 years.
SEALLS: I can tell you as a forecaster, if you take away your input data, your forecast on average is not going to improve.
BORUNDA: Summer is hurricane, heat and wildfire season across much of the country. Friday and Uccellini say the changes at the Weather Service are going to put people in danger this summer.
Alejandra Borunda, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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