4 Officials Protest Weather Service Cuts

Shaken by faulty forecasts that may have contributed to the recent deaths of three Coast Guard crewmen off the coast of Washington as well as about $300 million in crop losses after a surprise Florida freeze, four senior National Weather Service officials have protested severe budget cutbacks that they charge “increase the risk of unnecessary deaths, injuries and damage” across the United States.

In a sharply worded memorandum of protest to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Chief D. James Baker, the officials charged that staff layoffs and operating cutbacks designed to pare $27.5 million from the service’s annual budget of nearly $500 million “jeopardize public safety by greatly increasing the risk of weather-related disasters.”

“We believe strongly that these decisions are ill-advised and will increase the risk of unnecessary deaths, injuries and damage,” according to the memo that was made public Monday.

Jobs at the National Hurricane Center in Miami, the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., and other forecast offices that issue warnings on nature’s most destructive events are included among 43 positions cut. The deadliest tornadoes usually form in April and May, while the six-month Atlantic Ocean hurricane season begins June 1.

Also affected, however, are staffing, data collection and analysis at the service’s aviation and marine forecast centers, which provide information to virtually every pilot and ship’s captain in North America. “Anybody who flies commercial aviation in this country, or any person who has interests in commercial fishing or boating ought to be concerned,” said Ronald D. McPherson, director of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, one of the memo’s signers.

In addition to McPherson, the Feb. 19 memo is signed by Louis Boezi, deputy assistant administrator of the weather service for modernization; Thomas D. Potter, western region director, and Douglas H. Sargeant, director of the office of systems development.

The memo was sent through the office of weather service chief Elbert W. Friday Jr., who endorsed the memo’s contents and appended a note from a forecaster he described as in “a serious emotional state of distress over the deterioration of the NWS’s infrastructure.”

In that note, a marine forecaster in the service’s Seattle office complained that a lack of data from ocean buoys has compromised forecasters’ ability to predict storms and the size of seas such as those in which three Coast Guardsmen lost their lives Feb. 12 while trying to rescue two people on a sinking sailboat off the coast near La Push, Wash.

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In their memo, the four officials write that, during the rescue, seas that were forecast to be 12 to 15 feet were as high as 24 feet. “One of our buoys was nearby, but had been inoperative for weeks due to the lack of maintenance,” the memo stated.

The January vegetable and citrus crop losses were caused by a Florida freeze for which farmers were unprepared. Until recently, frost and freeze warnings were supplied twice daily by an agricultural weather forecast office in central Florida. But that office was closed last April.

Dissent from within the ranks of the weather service, made up of scientists and bureaucrats, is rare, and the four authors of the memo to Baker indicated that they understood the drastic nature of their protest. But, they said, the tragedy that claimed the lives of the Coast Guardsmen and the bad forecast on the freeze “have shaken us deeply and serve to reaffirm our apprehensions.”

“It is unlikely that we will go through the rest of the winter storm season, the severe weather season and then the hurricane season, without one or more occurrences which will shine a harsh light on the weakened capabilities of the NWS,” said the memo. “There will be an increased probability of more instances in which people will die or suffer serious injury or property loss.”

In Miami on Monday, McPherson said that he has told his bosses that he will end his 38-year career with the NWS if the budget cuts are not restored. “I reached the conclusion that I simply could not be a party to reductions that would weaken the NWS,” he said. McPherson said he would remain in his Washington position “as long as there is a possibility of turning these reductions around.”

The service said that it will close its Southern regional headquarters at Ft. Worth responsible for 10 states from New Mexico to Florida, and split its duties between offices in Bohemia, N.Y., and Kansas City, Mo.

At the National Hurricane Center, 12 jobs were eliminated, including those of two overnight meteorologists who produce shipping and aviation weather reports. Hurricane Center deputy director Jerry Jarrell said the data they gather is crucial in making accurate storm warnings.