Retired National Weather Service director says cuts could lead to ‘needless loss of life’

The National Weather Service, which is responsible for tracking storms and warning the public about them, has lost hundreds of employees to federal cuts and voluntary resignations. President Trump also wants to reduce the budget of NWS’s parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, by more than a quarter.

On the heels of deadly storms across the Mississippi River basin and ahead of a hurricane season that’s predicted to be worse than average, five former NWS heads released a letter last month outlining their concerns regarding the cuts.

Elbert “Joe” Friday, Jr. signed the letter. He served as director of the NWS from 1988 until 1997. He spoke with the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk about his operational concerns under the proposed changes.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

AVERY MARTINEZ: Tell me about your years at the NWS – I'm sure you saw a fair amount of change in that time.

ELBERT “JOE” FRIDAY, JR.: That period of time in the late 1980s, early 1990s was a major revolution in the National Weather Service. We've always been a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week operation. But in that period of time, we went through an extensive modernization program to try to improve our capability overall.

We brought in new technology, including the Doppler radars that have been so vital for allowing us to identify severe weather as it develops and be able to provide good lead times and the warnings. When I first came to the National Weather Service in 1981, the average lead time for a weather warning for a tornado was two minutes.

What we said was what you just saw was a tornado. It didn't help the people on the touchdown, but it did help the people further down the street. After we finished the modernization, those lead times increased to 10 minutes, giving people ample time to take shelter. One of the things I'm very concerned about is when we went through the modernization, we very carefully laid out the staff we planned for a long period of time.

What's happened recently with the activities of the federal government has been not well thought out. Plans for reduction, but massive. It's a hatchet. It's a chainsaw. It's that kind of approach to reducing the staff without thinking about what the consequences will be as a result of that.

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MARTINEZ: Five former leaders of the NWS recently wrote a letter in which you outlined the consequences of reducing staffing and funding for the agency. In the letter itself, you and your co-signers spoke about the “needless loss of life.” What’s at stake, and how do staffing levels affect warnings and predictions for average citizens?

FRIDAY: The weather service is a 24-hour a day, seven-day a week operation, 365 days a year. The staffing levels are right now as a result of the cuts that have already occurred, the lowest they have been since I can remember.

They're below 4,000 people in the (NWS). What's happened now is that you have several offices that are no longer staffed to the levels that they can provide 24-hour-a-day operation. Several of them are closing on the night shift.

Now, whenever they see a storm coming, they stress – they bring in people overtime and they'll put them on and they'll try to do the best possible job that they can to provide the best possible service they can.

They recognize the impact they can have on a community by providing good information and good weather warnings, and they are really committed to that. I've seen men and women when we've had severe weather activities at various places that actually stood at or stayed at their desk working with the emergency management people, working with the local authorities to make sure they had the last good information, even when tornadoes were moving over their community, and they weren't sure if their families were going to be safe or not.

But what happens is that you can only work so long in an overtime status. You can only take so many shifts at a time before you are just absolutely exhausted.

We have several offices around the country that have no chief or meteorologist in charge any longer. The Houston office has lost all three of its senior people there right now.

They're in the process of trying to get new people to fill those jobs, but they're going to have to be moved from other places, which is going to end up with stressing those offices from whence they come.

So the real issue is that you can only stretch a rubber band so tight before it snaps.

Now, I'm not suggesting that the delay in any of the warnings or forecasts that have occurred already has been a result of short staffing. I'm not suggesting that any of the deaths – and we've had a lot of deaths from tornadoes – are caused by short staffing, but eventually there will be situations that develop where the staff is so stressed that they won't be able to do a good job, they won't be able to get the information out to the emergency management community in time.

And that indeed, there is a strong probability that lives will be lost directly due to the short staffing in the (NWS).

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MARTINEZ: June 1 was the official start of hurricane season. Looking ahead, is that the main concern -- that we may not be able to keep ahead of these severe weather situations?

FRIDAY: I'm clearly concerned about the loss of personnel. We've lost a significant number of electronic technicians because they've taken the (retirement options or payouts to leave the service).

You can make more money as an electronic technician outside the (NWS). So, I can't blame the men and women that have taken these early outs, because of the uncertainties of future government employment.

They're the ones that maintain the radars. We stand a very good chance of having an increased failure rate in the radar system around the country as a result of the loss of electronic technicians at this time.

We have backups. We have an office here in Oklahoma that serves to provide assistance when a local office can't maintain the radar. But you can, again, only stress those things so far.

With the hurricane season approaching, I'm very concerned that coastal stations are not going to be able to respond as well as they have in the past.

But there's one other thing that's very important. A substantial portion of (the proposed 27 percent) cut comes in NOAA research. NOAA research is the lifeblood of the organization, whether it be National Weather Service, whether it be National Ocean Service. It is what allows us to continue to make improvements.

It is the NOAA Research Laboratory that developed the Doppler radar technology and applications for us that we have been so successful with. It's the NOAA research that has developed the improvements in hurricane forecasting, so that we now have a better handle on what's going to happen over the next two or three days than we've had in the past.

So by cutting your research, you're eliminating the input to improving the products and services in the future by reducing the staffing, you're eliminating the ability to provide the services based on what we have today. So these cuts are going to affect both our current services and then our ability to improve services in the future.

The total cost (for the NWS) to the American public is less than the cost of a Big Mac and a Coke on an annual basis. So the cost of weather services in the United States is extremely low per capita.

It is one of the best bargains that you can get.

MARTINEZ: All of these NWS leaders agreed to put their name on this letter and raise these concerns. I feel it's been very rare to see multiple former heads of an agency all come together in agreement and sign on to it.

FRIDAY: It is very rare for all five of us to have agreed on anything -- but we have indeed agreed on the necessity of voicing our concerns about the future of the weather service.

We don't really talk that much. This is one of the first times that we've actually gotten together.

Number one, it was amazing that we could all find each other. Number two, it was amazing that we could agree on these two pages so that we could also add our name to it. Number three, it was also amazing that we all had the courage to do it, and we weren't afraid of consequences.

This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation.