{"id":59093,"date":"2025-07-12T08:11:28","date_gmt":"2025-07-12T08:11:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/59093\/"},"modified":"2025-07-12T08:11:28","modified_gmt":"2025-07-12T08:11:28","slug":"in-flash-flood-hotspots-like-texas-many-federal-meteorologist-positions-remain-unfilled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/59093\/","title":{"rendered":"In Flash Flood Hotspots Like Texas, Many Federal Meteorologist Positions Remain Unfilled"},"content":{"rendered":"

In recent days, flash floods have wreaked havoc across the country. In New Mexico<\/a>. In North Carolina<\/a>. And in Texas<\/a>, where by many accounts, the National Weather Service acted appropriately as it issued increasingly urgent warnings of a deluge last week.<\/p>\n

But weather-service staffing has been affected by Trump administration cutbacks across the federal government. Some experts say future forecasts and warnings could suffer.<\/p>\n

An analysis of National Weather Service vacancies found that in more than a third of offices overseeing regions that are particularly vulnerable to flash floods, one or more of three senior leadership roles, including chief meteorologist, are unfilled.<\/p>\n

Source: National Weather Service<\/p>\n

Note: Data as of July 7. Reflects vacancies at local forecast offices within three leadership roles, which include a chief meteorologist or hydrologist, an operations officer, and a coordinating officer.<\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/p>\n

The weather service\u2019s Houston-Galveston office, which straddles an area that sees frequent hurricanes but is also known as \u201cflash flood alley,\u201d currently has no chief meteorologist, science operations officer or warning-coordination meteorologist, according to staff lists from the weather service.<\/p>\n

The Austin-San Antonio Office, one office responsible for areas hard hit by the weekend flood that killed more than 120 people<\/a>, since April has had no permanent warning-coordination meteorologist<\/a>, a post that would typically oversee the weather service\u2019s contact with local emergency officials and others. The San Angelo office, the other office responsible, has had no chief meteorologist.<\/p>\n

It was an impressive effort for the weather service staff to still push out a flash flood warning three hours before deadly torrents struck in Texas, said Alan Gerard, a former division chief at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration\u2019s National Severe Storms Laboratory.<\/p>\n

Still, the overall staffing shortage \u201cweakens the agency, and weakens their preparedness,\u201d he said. \u201cThe longer these vacancies go on, the more it puts these offices under stress.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leadership vacancies have more than doubled <\/p>\n

Source: National Weather Service, Internet Archive.<\/p>\n

Note: Reflects vacancies across leadership roles at local and regional forecast offices, excluding Center Weather Service Units.<\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/p>\n

Neil Jacobs, the Trump administration\u2019s pick to head NOAA, faced questioning over the staffing concerns at his confirmation hearing<\/a> on Wednesday. The National Weather Service is part of the agency Mr. Jacobs would lead.<\/p>\n

\u201cNOAA has lost at least 1,875 employees, totaling a combined 27,000 years of experience and institutional knowledge, and now has over 3,000 vacant staff positions at the very worst time,\u201d said Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.<\/p>\n

Mr. Jacobs said that, \u201cIf confirmed, I want to ensure that staffing weather service offices is a top priority.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kim Doster, NOAA\u2019s communications director, said the agency had made sure extra personnel were on duty during the flooding in Texas. \u201cAll forecasts and warnings were issued in a timely manner,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Agency officials also said the agency is using short-term assignments and reassignments to fill positions at field offices where there is the greatest need and that some \u201cmission-critical field positions\u201d will soon be advertised, despite an overall hiring freeze.<\/p>\n

Neil Jacobs after his confirmation hearing this week.<\/p>\n

Haiyun Jiang\/The New York Times<\/p>\n

Flood damage in Kerrville, Texas, this week.<\/p>\n

Loren Elliott for The New York Times<\/p>\n

Flash floods triggered by intense rainfall are one of the deadliest extreme weather phenomenons. They are complex events and tricky to forecast. To send warnings and alerts, meteorologists must consider dozens of supercomputer-generated weather models that crunch data on current weather to forecast the future.<\/p>\n

That presents a particular challenge for federal weather forecasters in parts of the country that are most prone to fast-moving floods. Decades of flooding data point to those flash flood \u201chot spots,\u201d typically areas that include mountainous streams and rivers that can be quickly overrun following extreme rainfall.<\/p>\n

And as the planet warms<\/a>, flash floods are projected to become more severe, or as researchers say, more \u201cflashy,\u201d a measurement devised by scientists<\/a> to calculate and compare the speed and severity of floods. The flashier a flood, the more rapidly the water rises and the greater danger it could pose, possibly even overwhelming dams and other stormwater defenses.<\/p>\n

A team of scientists at the University of Oklahoma who tracked decades of data from river gauges and other sources found that if climate change continues unabated, floods across the United States will become flashier<\/a> in some parts of the country, like the Southwest, by more than 10 percent.<\/p>\n

Smaller rivers and streams tended to be most prone, because they tend to swell rapidly after heavy rain and have few dams or other infrastructure to stop a deadly deluge, said Zhi Li, now a hydrologist at Stanford University who led the research.<\/p>\n

In the face of these changes, the National Weather Service has seen cutbacks across the network. Two or more of the top positions are vacant at weather service offices overseeing parts of Oregon and California, Texas, Ohio and Kentucky, all of which lie within flash flood hotspots.<\/p>\n

Overall, as of July 7, there were more than 70 vacancies across leadership positions at weather service offices across the country, compared with around 30 at the same time last year, according to staffing data.<\/p>\n

A person with knowledge of staffing issues in the weather services\u2019s southern region, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said managers were bringing in forecasters from other offices to fill shortages. Managers have been concerned in particular about the Houston office, which is missing its entire top tier of managers and has been borrowing chief meteorologists from other offices. The southern regional office, which oversees 10 states, is also without key officials, including a regional hydrologist.<\/p>\n

Vacancies also exist in top posts at 13 regional River Forecast Centers, which are responsible for issuing guidance on flash floods for local weather offices. The center in Chanhassen, Minn., has two out of three top posts open. The office in Pleasant Hill, Mo., which oversees the Missouri Basin, has one top post open.<\/p>\n

The vacancies go beyond the flash flood hotspots. Some offices were missing technicians responsible for maintaining radio communications, another person said, and were relying on nearby offices to fill the gaps.<\/p>\n

Rick Spinrad, the NOAA administrator under President Barack Obama, said he was concerned about the service\u2019s ability to respond to events, particularly as hurricane season and wildfire season start to approach their peaks.<\/p>\n

Local weather services, in particular, were expected to operate round the clock, he said, and could be tasked with sending out alerts in the middle of the night, as staffers in Austin were compelled to do in the recent Texas flash floods. \u201cIt could be Cleveland. It could be Spokane,\u201d he said. \u201cI don’t know how you can reduce the staffing and expect to have the same quality and timing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Trump administration\u2019s plans to eliminate NOAA\u2019s research arm could also mean that work on improving forecasting and tools would stall, he said. \u201cIt guarantees that we will never see improvements,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

One less obvious but important role weather service staffers played that risked falling to the wayside was educating members of the public on how to respond to extreme weather, said Hatim Sharif, a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Texas at San Antonio. That is particularly important for flash flooding, which people tended to underestimate, he said.<\/p>\n

Last month, 13 people were killed in San Antonio<\/a> after they tried to drive through fast-flooding streets. \u201cAll of them were washed away,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Among those who worked on public outreach was Paul Yura, who had been the warning-coordination meteorologist at the Austin office of the National Weather Service before taking early retirement in April, the local news outlet KXAN reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He had spent much of his career warning about the dangers of flash flooding in the area. \u201cI’ve worked on plenty of different events where we weren’t expecting heavy rainfall overnight, but one thunderstorm dumps all this rain and we get a big flash flood,\u201d he said to local environmental officials during one talk in November.<\/p>\n

Mr. Yura, who couldn\u2019t be reached for comment for this article, retired two months before the recent flash floods in Texas. His position remains unfilled.<\/p>\n

A correction was made on July 11, 2025:<\/strong> An earlier version of this article identified incorrectly one of the management posts that is vacant at the Houston-Galveston weather office. The post is science operations officer, not chief hydrologist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In recent days, flash floods have wreaked havoc across the country. In New Mexico. In North Carolina. And…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":59094,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,8072,6231,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,358,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-59093","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-floods","10":"tag-national-weather-service","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-newyork","14":"tag-newyorkcity","15":"tag-ny","16":"tag-nyc","17":"tag-texas","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-united-states-of-america","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114839255974208292","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}