National Weather Service Still Struggling With Staff Shortages

Despite promises of rehiring, the National Weather
Service remains dangerously low on staff.
Burnout looms large and that could
hurt public safety in the U.S. 

As tropical storms and hurricanes whirl, and wildfires threaten, and winter storms loom sooner than you think, the National Weather Service is still struggling with deep staff shortages, as the Washington Post reported this weekend. 

The stupid staff firings led by the odious Elon Musk last winter and spring, along with resignations and retirements means 600 workers, or about one in every seven, left the National Weather Service. 

Adequate staffing at the National Weather Service is at about 4,500 employees. Right now, they're well south of 4,000. 

According to the Washington Post: 

"Some National Weather Service staffers are working double shifts to keep forecasting offices open. Others are operating under a 'buddy system,' in which adjacent offices help monitor severe weather in understaffed regions. Still others are jettisoning services deemed not absolutely necessary, such as making presentations to schoolchildren."

Somehow, National Weather Service storm monitoring and weather forecasting have gone almost without any interruptions.  

However, just think if two big weather emergencies happened at once.  I don't know whether the NWS would have been able to handle it. Take this week for example,

Hurricane Humberto and soon to be hurricane Imelda have been very close together in the Atlantic Ocean, making forecasting difficult. .But neither storm is a direct threat to the United States, so forecasting for the two tropical systems is being managed OK.

But what if everything was further west. Imagine a scenario in which Hurricane Humberto was about to make landfall in the Carolinas while at the same time Imelda was threatening Houston or New Orleans.

Would the National Weather Service have the bandwidth to manage both crises? Once upon a time, they would. Right now, I'm not so sure. 

CURRENT NWS SITUATION

The Trump administration did a reversal earlier this year and granted the National Weather Service an exemption to a government-wide hiring freeze. But the fresh hiring largely hasn't happened yet. 

The incoming new NOAA director, Neil Jacobs, has pledged to address the staff shortages, but a U.S. Senate Committee just barely advanced his nomination on September 17. 

NOAA staffers, including most everyone at the National Weather Service are working overtime. Their work/life balance is shot to hell. WaPo says managers are picking up forecasting shifts. Some offices are sharing their employees remotely with locations that don't have enough staff. That requires overtime and working weekends. 

Even worse, if the government shuts down this week, NWS meteorologists considered essential employees. So they would be working without pay on top of everything else. At least until Congress and Donald Trump finally decide to get their act together. 

Good luck with that. 

There was a lot of concern this spring and summer that overstretched NWS meteorologists would miss things like rapidly developing tornadoes and flash floods. If that has happened, it's been rare. I haven't come across data showing whether or not forecasts for dangerous weather have degraded under the Trump regime. 

Stay tuned for eventual studies and research on that topic. 

Here's an example of the potential danger. The National Weather Service office in central Texas was able to issue timely flash flood warnings ahead of and during the epic and deadly July 4 weekend Texas Hill Country flash floods. Those floods still claimed more than 130 lives, despite the warnings.   

At the time of the flood, the Austin/San Antonio NWS office which covers the area hit by the flood, was  understaffed by six employees. One of the vacant positions at that NWS office was warning coordinator. 

The warning coordinator is the one who alerts local officials to danger. In the Texas flood, local officials appear not to have responded adequately to the warnings. Early indications are that was not primarily the fault of the National Weather Service. However,  communication between the NWS and local emergency officials is still under investigation, the Texas Standard reports. 

Three months after the flood, the Austin/San Antonio NWS office is now seven employees short of fully staffed. The warning coordinator position is still unfilled.

EXHAUSTED STAFF

Meanwhile, the longer the meteorologists are overworked, the more likely the will start to miss things. 

That could cost lives. 

"They're going to run out of gas," John Sokich, a retired National Weather Service employee told the Washington Post. "They're going to start missing things. You can't sustain that level of effort for much longer."

A NOAA spokesperson blandly said that the NWS "remains equipped to meet its mission of protecting American lives and property through timely forecasts and critical decision support services."

Yeah, only because NWS meteorologists are now practically killing themselves accomplishing that mission.  

Keeping Emergency Managers Awake At Night: What Happens If A City's Power Grid Collapses In A Big Heat Wave

As bad as Hurricane Beryl in Houston back in July, the city dodged a bullet that experts say they increasingly worry about: 

An extended, widespread power blackout in a big city during a major heat wave. 

High temperatures are the leading weather-related cause of death in the United States - and worldwide.  That's when the electricity is on and working fine.

Now take a big southern city like Houston, Miami, Dallas, or Atlanta, hit any of them with a big storm that trashes the power grid, then bring on day after day of humid heat in the upper 90s or hotter, and you will have a scary number of deaths. 

It was bad enough in Houston with Beryl. Over a million households and businesses were still without power days after Beryl struck. Temperatures did rise into the 90s on some of the days following the storm. But luckily, the heat was not really a more intense than normal in the days after Beryl. .

Still, the combination of a lack of power and the normal humid heat of Houston surely led to some extra deaths. 

Eventually, experts say, a much more serious combination of widespread power failures and intense heat is inevitable, leading to the risk of deadly disasters that would make Houston's Beryl experience seem like a breeze. 

A Washington Post analysis indicated a long, citywide blackout in Houston coming during a severe heat wave would lead to 600 to 1,500 people in the Houston metro area over five days. During a big heat wave with the power grid working as it should, the same heat wave would kill perhaps 50 people. 

WaPo is probably picking on Houston in their analysis because the power grid in Texas overall, including Houston, isn't especially reliable. Residents of that metro area are 2.7 times more likely to deal with power outages than the average American.

The hurricane/power outage/heat wave nightmare scenario might be getting more likely due to that usual bugaboo, climate change.  Hurricanes are starting to form earlier and earlier in the season, increasing the odds they'll coincide with the worst of summer heat waves.

Plus, those heat waves are getting more intense as the world warms. 

Those factors increase the chances that things would be even worse, as things break down in a city pretty quickly when the power goes out. 

 As the Washington Post describes the scenario:

"When a power outage hits a city, some services immediately disappear. After Hurricane Beryl, stoplights ceased working; some gas stations, which provided critical services to anyone running a generator, lost power themselves and closed. Cell towers not equipped with their own backup power went down, severing thousands of people from communicating with the outside world. 

At the same time, experts say, the population instantly becomes divided: Those with power - or the money or means to get it - and those without."

At first, during these heat wave power failures, you get a burst of activity as people search for ways to gas up their cars and generators, find ice, and buy non-perishable groceries. 

From there, things keep going south. 911 calls surge as people who depend on ventilators, oxygen concentrators and CPAP machines are screwed without electricity, so their conditions worsen.  

Medical clinics won't help. They'll be without power, too. So emergency rooms would soon become swamped. 

After a few days, even comparatively healthy people will begin to succumb to the effects of heat.  A sort of healthy person can deal with eight or  nine hours of hot, humid weather, as long as they get a cooling respite at night. 

But with no electricity and no air conditioning, that respite never arrives. Hospitals then become even more overwhelmed. 

This isn't just a Houston we have a  problem situation. Any major city prone to intense heat waves could suffer just as greatly. 

A study separate from the Washington Post's analysis indicates a power outage combined with a heat wave in torrid Phoenix could kill around 13,000 people.  A similar situation in much further north Detroit could claim more than 1,500 or more lives.   

A medical crisis wouldn't be the only problem. There's violence. 

Heat tends to bring out the worst in people, making us more short tempered and for some of us, prone to violence. 

Our current socio-economic situation makes this even more of a powder keg.  There's a massive and growing gap between the haves and the have nots in the United States. 

Some people who are under the poverty-driving thumb of this arrangement might well resort to looting, stealing, robbing. We can't condone that behavior, but we can understand where it comes from in these situations. 

If you think I'm being alarmist, just look at the New York City blackout in July, 1977. It hit during a horrendous heat wave.  It happened at a time when the United States was in a deep recession. 

New York City was in especially dire straights. The unemployment rate was at 12 percent.  Inflation raged. Crime rates soared. City services had been severely cut because of the fiscal crisis. There had been large layoffs of teachers, sanitation workers, firefighters and police in New York. 

Then, on the hot and humid evening of July 13, 1977, lightning struck four important power transmission lines, plunging New York City into darkness.

That night and the next day, amid extreme heat, New York was wracked by looting and arson.  At least 1,000 fires broke out, the majority of them being arson. There were more than 4,000 arrests. 

July, 1977 was a dark example of what can happen when power outages, extreme heat and economic disparities join forces.  

It's a cautionary tale, one I hope I don't ever have to write about in this blog.