Published: March 7, 2025 | Last Updated on March 8, 2025, 11:13 AM
OKLAHOMA CITY — UPDATE — The Trump administration’s unprecedented recent moves to dismantle the nation’s federal weather forecasting infrastructure could carry major consequences for Oklahoman jobs and potentially deadly consequences for citizens nationwide, even as legislators claim safety for state weather facilities.
Led by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, the Trump administration is forcing mass layoffs and downsizings for the National Weather Service (NWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
As the federal body that oversees weather and storm forecasting, catalogs weather data, and spearheads the majority of American weather research, NOAA houses the NWS, the Storm Prediction Center, the National Hurricane Center, and more, including the National Weather Center (NWC) on Norman’s University of Oklahoma campus.
In late February, the first round of layoffs hit the agencies, forcing the exit of hundreds of staffers and forecasters across the country – including at the National Weather Center in Norman – all on the eve of the regularly stormy and increasingly tornadic spring season.
Then, on Tuesday of this week, administration officials announced plans to not renew federal building leases on two important weather forecasting and research hubs, including Norman’s Radar Operations Center.
Meteorologists and researchers say all of these moves threaten to significantly weaken forecast accuracy and data availability at a time when climate change is causing a noted increase in severe weather and potentially deadly storm events.
The news has caused an uproar among weather-aware Oklahomans, with homemade signs placed outside the National Weather Center imploring residents to contact their Congressmen.
New Norman mayor-elect Stephen Holman said Thursday that he plans to argue against these moves in Washington DC, and U.S. Congressman Tom Cole (R-OK 4th District) released a statement Friday claiming to have secured reassurance from DOGE that the National Weather Center would remain operational.
Rep. Cole’s statement did not, however, address the widespread layoffs already in effect or to what degree the NWC would remain staffed, nor did it make any mention of the Radar Operations Center’s status or of policymakers’ stated plans to break up the NOAA in favor of largely privatizing and decentralizing weather coverage.
“This would be unbelievable if this happened,” meteorology professor Howard Bluestein – formerly of the OU School of Meteorology in Norman – told Free Press by phone. “This would be devastating. It would be going back to the 1930s.”
Staffing crisis
The layoffs at Norman’s National Weather Center and across the entire NOAA network of agencies add further complications to an already understaffed field that remains reliant on human researchers for analysis and forecasting.
An anonymous email received by the OU Daily allegedly sent from inside the NWC following news of the layoffs said that if staffing numbers are reduced to the federally mandated numbers, there will not be enough staff left to adequately manage tornado events in Oklahoma.
“You need humans in the loop,” said Bluestein. “You need humans in there to interpret the models, to decide what models make the forecast make sense, and to massage what’s coming out from all the different data sources and model sources. You need that. If you did away with the humans, we’d be in terrible, terrible trouble.”
With even the majority of private weather centers – such as television news networks – relying most heavily on data and information collected from NOAA agencies like the NWS and the Storm Prediction Center, reducing the staff and technologies available would likely leave only privately controlled, AI-generated forecast models.
“There are some hopeful signs that AI can help weather forecasting, but you would not want to cut off the numerical weather prediction models that actually use the equations that describe the atmosphere,” Bluestein explained. “You want to have a conglomeration. You want to put the AI models together with the numerical weather prediction models to get a better forecast.”
Radar Operations Center
Beyond predictive forecasts and models, federally overseen weather services also provide real-time tracking and analysis of weather patterns and storms utilizing a wide network of radar, led by the Doppler radar systems.
That entire nationwide radar network is collected, managed, and maintained largely through Norman’s Radar Operations Center at the NWC.
Officials were informed Tuesday that the federal government would not be renewing the Radar Operations Center’s lease on its current building after September of this year.
That not only bodes for further layoffs and firings for Oklahomans but also casts considerable doubt on the ability to maintain and standardize the radar network.
“You need to have a standard,” Bluestein said. “You don’t want a network of radars that come from different companies. You’d like to have a standard radar so that if something goes wrong in one place, you know how to fix it, and if it has certain characteristics in its output, you know.”
While Oklahoma’s privately owned weather equipment and radar systems at the television news networks are considered among the best in the world, the entire country relies on the data coming through Oklahoma at the Radar Operations Center, especially in areas without that level of private investment.
“In my opinion, central Oklahoma is the best in the country for television weather, and some of the stations have their own radars,” Bluestein said. “But what we need is the network of radars. And if that were to go out, … that would affect other parts of the country, perhaps even more than Oklahoma.”
Trust and confusion
Oklahomans rely on trustworthy, accurate weather forecasting, possibly more so than in much of the nation, given our state’s frequently severe weather and storm seasons.
Free Press heard from a state government employee (who asked to remain unnamed for fear of retribution) that tackles a long commute each day to her office in OKC, often when it’s still dark and storms can’t be easily seen.
“Due to a three-hour daily commute,” she told Free Press, “I need reliable and accurate sources for weather updates.”
Likewise, Christin Bivens – herself a data researcher – not only knows the importance of accurate analysis but also relies on the accuracy of weather forecasts for the frequently stormy rural area of Purcell, where she lives and raises her young daughter.
“I’m already less confident than usual in the current forecasts because of layoffs,” Bivens said. “The probationary employees that have been fired are the ones that would’ve been seasoned professionals in just a few years.”
Prof. Bluestein worries that eroding confidence and rising privatization could result in dire consequences and levels of surprise and confusion with the weather that we haven’t experienced in decades.
“Some things shouldn’t be private,” he said. “You would have different companies making different forecasts, and the public wouldn’t know which to believe, and that would cause tremendous confusion. In a dangerous situation, when there’s a tornado coming, or there’s large hail coming, or when there’s a possibility of a flood, you want the information to be consistent.”
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
