More than a month ago, the Trump administration told the National Weather Service to hire meteorologists and other specialists for 126 vacant positions in depleted forecast offices around the country.
But those jobs have yet to even be posted on the federal government’s official hiring website, USAjobs.gov, said a spokesperson for NOAA, which oversees the weather agency.
“While I can’t confirm numbers at this time, the process for advertising open positions vacated by voluntary early retirements is currently underway. NWS will make those posts available soon,” said Kim Doster, NOAA’s communications director, in an email Tuesday.
Vacant posts at NWS local offices after the Trump administration’s recent downsizing are now in the spotlight with the catastrophic July 4 floods in Texas that killed more than 100 people when the Guadalupe River rapidly rose in the early morning hours. While federal officials and independent experts said the NWS accurately forecast the flood and issued increasingly urgent warnings about the dangers, they’ve noted depleted staff across the country could be less able to coordinate with local officials ahead of weather emergencies.
“Considering that there are critical staff shortages at NWS weather forecast offices across the country and the president of the United States has given NWS leadership permission to hire 126 replacements, it begs the question why the Department of Commerce has not implemented a presidential directive,” said Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the National Weather Service Employees Organization, the union that represents many NWS staffers.
Two NWS forecast offices that serve the Texas Hill Country region that flooded, Austin/San Antonio and San Angelo, remain without critical staff, including a warning coordination meteorologist in San Antonio who is responsible for coordinating with state and local emergency management agencies during extreme events.
But Fahy has noted that the Texas offices were adequately staffed during the flooding because NWS called “all hands on deck.”
As search-and-rescue efforts continued in Texas, the third tropical storm of the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season that started June 1 made landfall on the South Carolina coast, causing extensive flooding and prompting water rescues in parts of North Carolina that received up to 10 inches of rain Sunday into Monday.
North Carolina officials confirmed Tropical Storm Chantal, which was downgraded to a depression after landfall, had killed two people, knocked out power to more than 30,000 people and closed two major interstate highways.
It remains unclear how many key NWS forecast office positions remain vacant across the country. A NOAA list of senior staff by region shows vacancies across the agency’s 122 offices, including more than 20 vacancies in local offices under the joint category of warning coordination meteorologist and service coordination hydrologist. There are also 27 empty spots in the combined category “meteorologist in charge” and “hydrologist in charge” on the list, which was updated Monday.
To date, nearly 600 employees have left NWS in recent months. Many took early retirement or buyout offers, while others were fired as probationary employees. The Commerce Department has since exempted NWS from a sweeping Trump administration hiring freeze for federal agencies, which would allow officials to fill some of those positions.
The agency has also offered internal transfers to employees who are willing to fill 76 positions at forecast offices facing acute staff shortages or in regions with high risk of weather disasters.
Doster did not respond to questions about how many NWS employees had accepted the internal transfers.
Fahy said “progress is indeed being made with members of the National Weather Service across the country who are volunteering to work in critically undrerstaffed offices, even on a temporary basis.”
On Monday, NOAA issued guidance implementing a new staffing policy for probationary employees, which would apply to any new hires. The move follows an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in April, which said that federal agencies in the past had too often failed to weed out poor performers during probation periods.
The guidance, which was reviewed by POLITICO’s E&E News, clarifies that probationary employees will separate from the agency at the end of their initial terms unless a supervisor deems them necessary and their continued employment is approved by a political appointee. Previous NOAA policy held that a probationary employee would continue in their roles unless they were dismissed for cause.
Rick Spinrad, NOAA’s former administrator under the Biden administration, predicted the policy will have wide-ranging implications, including “handcuffing the agency’s strengths in recruitment.”
“I can’t imagine going out to recruit people and telling them you’re going to probationary for three years with the assumption you’re going to be fired,” he said. “That’s just bad policy for any agency or company.”
