Without weather forecasters, our canaries in the storm, expect disaster

Before modern forecasting, hurricanes were mass casualty events. The 1900 Galveston Hurricane killed over 8,000 people, wiping out an entire city with a 15-foot storm surge. Less than a century ago, Hurricane Okeechobee killed over 2,500 Floridians in a tragedy that today would be largely preventable. 

We’ve come a long way since the days when hurricanes struck without warning. I know, because I helped develop the systems that save countless lives and give communities time to prepare. 

That was my job until February, when I was terminated by President Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency alongside hundreds of other scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

Since then, I have continued my work in hurricane forecasting through Cooperative Institute research; however, the cuts left deep holes across NOAA’s forecasting teams that’ve not been filled. This purge isn’t “cutting waste” — it is dismantling America’s hurricane monitoring systems.

At the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, I worked on the next-generation Hurricane Analysis and Forecast System. This system enabled emergency managers to issue timely evacuation orders during life-threatening hurricanes like Helene and Milton, helping prevent thousands of potential fatalities.

Yet even with cutting-edge forecasting, Helene revealed new, urgent challenges.

In the last decade, freshwater flooding surpassed storm surge as the leading cause of hurricane-related deaths. Helene’s victims were coastal residents and mountain communities, caught unprepared by catastrophic inland flooding. Dozens more died — victims of power outages, delayed medical care and collapsed infrastructure in the days after the storm passed. 

If our warning systems don’t evolve to keep pace with rapidly changing storms, Helene’s damage may seem merciful compared to future disasters. 

Precisely when adaptation is most urgent, political decisions have systematically dismantled our protective infrastructure. Key vacancies remain across NOAA’s local forecast offices, satellite operations and modeling teams — many of which are already stretched thin this hurricane season. 

Without continuous investment in modeling and surveillance, hurricane season, which officially began June 1, will become even deadlier and harder to predict. 

DOGE’s decimation of the forecasting workforce unravels a century of progress in hurricane survival rates. While the full impact of these cuts won’t be seen overnight, the damage will compound the longer these positions go unfilled.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration isn’t just a research agency; it’s America’s first line of defense against natural disasters. Forecasting is the foundation of all response efforts. While scientists aren’t knocking doors with evacuation orders ourselves, we’re the ones telling first responders when, if, and whose doors they should knock on. 

When NOAA functions at full capacity, emergency managers have the tools they need to prepare their communities. 

NOAA’s remaining scientists and National Weather Service forecasters will give their all this hurricane season to deliver the most accurate forecasts possible, but dedication can’t make up for a system that’s been hollowed out, and grit can only hold together this critical system for so long. 

Privatizing these forecasting services creates a dangerous “pay-to-play” model for life-saving information. This approach wouldn’t just create barriers for low-income families; it would hamstring small municipalities and volunteer emergency services trying to protect their communities. 

The private sector cannot fill this void. The National Weather Service processes over 6 billion observations daily and issues approximately 1.5 million forecasts and 50,000 warnings annually. No private entity possesses infrastructure that can match this scale and reliability. 

There is a better path forward. By recommitting to public science and restoring forecasters’ positions, we can build systems that adapt to changing storms, accurately track flood zones and storm paths, and provide both inland and coastal communities with the advanced warning they need to stay safe. 

We owe this to every family who will face the next Helene or Milton. Congress must act urgently to restore NOAA’s full operational capacity and reject all efforts to privatize these essential services. 

The FY26 federal budget proposes a $1.3 billion cut to NOAA’s core operations, such as satellite programs essential to forecasting, programs supporting climate modeling and even public education. 

NOAA can’t issue life-saving warnings if its data stream has gone dark. And the research that drives improvements in modeling and forecasting is threatened if some of the budget proposals come to fruition.

There have been some positive developments from Congress. The House Republicans’ fiscal 2026 Commerce-Justice-Science spending bill, announced on Monday, proposes a much-smaller cut of $387 million, bringing the NOAA budget to $5.8 billion. While it’s a modest improvement, it still does not fully cover the financial needs of an agency tasked with protecting hundreds of millions of Americans.

Hurricane forecasting shouldn’t be treated like a luxury or a political football. It’s public infrastructure that’s as essential as our power grids or water systems. Storm surges don’t check voter registrations before flooding homes, and hurricanes won’t stop based on who occupies the White House. 

Without urgent action in this year’s budget, we risk turning the worst-case scenario into reality. 

The question isn’t whether the storms are coming. It’s whether we’ll be ready when they do.

Andrew Hazelton is a former NOAA hurricane modeling specialist laid off earlier this year by the Trump administration.