Ken Graham started the year with a plan.
In January, days before President Donald Trump was sworn back into office, the National Weather Service director was in New Orleans for a meteorological conference, sharing his vision to transform the agency.
A top priority was putting more forecasters on the front lines of disaster response. And to do that, Graham — who began his NWS career as an intern in 1994 — wanted to embed meteorologists in emergency centers nationwide.
“We’re gonna get more local than ever,” he said during one of his conference talks. This kind of support “is what our emergency managers are demanding.”
But Graham’s plan to reinforce emergency centers with trained meteorologists has run headlong into Trump’s efforts to shrink the federal government.
The new administration implemented a federal hiring freeze on Jan. 20, and in the following months it culled around 600 staff members from the National Weather Service through layoffs and early retirement plans — leaving Graham’s vision in limbo.
Trump administration officials insist Graham’s program will continue, despite the staff losses. NWS still intends to embed meteorologists and hydrologists in state emergency operations centers, FEMA regional headquarters and Coast Guard district headquarters, said Kim Doster in an email. She’s the director of communications at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which houses NWS.
But it’s unclear how the program will move forward. Doster didn’t answer questions about when those jobs would be posted or which locations would be prioritized. NWS also declined repeated requests for an interview with Graham.
Meanwhile, the agency — which was recently authorized to begin hiring again — is scrambling to fill hundreds of vacant positions while some forecast offices remain critically understaffed. It’s unclear where the embedded specialist roles fall on the priority list.
Former NWS employees who worked with Graham say it’s clear the initiative isn’t proceeding as quickly or smoothly as it was intended. At the very least, they say, turmoil at the agency likely has interrupted an initiative designed to boost public safety while extreme weather events continue to wreak havoc around the country.
“I’m sure it’s changed,” said Brian LaMarre, a former NWS meteorologist and program manager who was working on Graham’s transformation plan before LaMarre retired from the agency in April.
It’s unclear how many embedded meteorologists would have been hired this year under Graham’s original vision. The first was brought on in November — a meteorologist to work full time from the Virginia state emergency operations center — and Graham gushed about the results during the meteorological conference in January, calling it an “absolute game changer.”
But the Virginia position was meant to be the first of many.
Graham had planned to start embedding full-time meteorologists or hydrologists in emergency operations centers across the country in 2025, including state emergency management offices, FEMA region headquarters and Coast Guard stations. A timeline he presented at the American Meteorological Society conference in New Orleans described 2025 as a test year for the program, with “many” meteorologists working out of emergency management offices by 2033.
Graham ultimately hoped to make embedded specialists possible for at least 69 locations across the country, according to LaMarre. They comprise 50 state emergency operations centers, 10 FEMA region headquarters and nine Coast Guard district stations.
At least one embedded position was canceled amid the agency’s upheaval this year.
A meteorologist was selected in January to work full time out of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, the magazine Texas Monthly reported in August, but the role was left unfilled after the hiring freeze was announced. The new hire otherwise would have been on staff during the deadly July 4 floods in central Texas, which killed at least 135 people.
Ben Gurnett, a communications officer with the Texas Division of Emergency Management, said the agency “still has a team of in-house meteorologists who support the agency’s operations, in addition to regular coordination the agency maintains with the National Weather Service.”
NWS also selected a meteorologist in January to embed in FEMA’s Region 10 headquarters in Bothell, Washington. The person intended for that role was based in Salt Lake City and planned to relocate, but it’s unclear whether that happened after the hiring freeze went into effect.
FEMA Region 10 referred questions about the position to NWS, and NWS did not respond to specific inquiries about the role. A LinkedIn page for the meteorologist in question still lists Salt Lake City as a location.
NWS was recently authorized to hire around 450 positions, and the agency has posted at least 22 job listings since the start of September. None so far has advertised embedded meteorologist or hydrologist roles.
Doster, the NOAA communications director, said these positions are coming — and added they won’t take away from the agency’s ability to staff its forecast offices or maintain other core functions.
“Our objective is to protect current operations while also adding embedded positions as swiftly and strategically as resources allow,” she said.
But the 450 authorized hires won’t fully make up for the staff losses since January. And dozens of forecast offices across the country are still missing some of their most senior meteorologists and hydrologists. Weather experts have expressed concern the hiring process could take at least a year to complete while still leaving the agency understaffed.
That could complicate Graham’s original vision.
“The objective was to have butts in the seats in the emergency operations centers and closer immediate connections with the emergency managers,” said former NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad, who was still in that role when Graham launched his transformation plan. “But all of this required at the very least sustained staffing — not trying to deal with a 20 percent reduction in the workforce.”
‘Now is the time to execute this change’
Graham’s plan for embedded weather experts is part of a broader long-term strategy. Known within the agency as “Ken’s 10,” it’s a road map he designed when he rose to the agency’s top spot in 2022, outlining NWS priorities through 2033.
The list includes technological advancements, flood mapping projects, improved forecasts, more efficient staffing systems and a variety of other initiatives. Some projects — such as a new agency chat system and a better radar imagery website — are already complete.
But better collaboration with emergency managers is a special interest for Graham, who previously was the meteorologist-in-charge at the New Orleans forecast office, where he worked during multiple hurricanes and in 2010 collaborated with local officials after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
“That trust with those emergency managers — that’s where those decisions are made,” Graham said during a town hall discussion at one of his conference talks in January. “I’ve been there so many times on the front lines.”
The plan for embedded specialists is flexible, Graham added. Some emergency operations centers might not want a full-time staffer in the office. But he hoped to make the positions available for any states, FEMA headquarters and Coast Guard stations that asked for them.
Weather experts and emergency managers support the idea.
“It’s been long in the making, and I think it’s at the peak where now is the time to execute this change,” said LaMarre, the former NWS meteorologist and program manager.
Forecasts have improved dramatically in recent decades. But extreme weather events are growing more frequent and more intense, LaMarre said, while human populations continue to expand into dangerous areas such as flood and wildfire zones.
Some local emergency managers have taken interest in the broader concept put forward by Graham. The St. Louis County emergency management division in Minnesota partnered in April with the Duluth NWS forecast office, which will embed a rotating staff member in the emergency operations office five days a week, according to the local WDIO News.
In the past, local forecast offices have temporarily embedded meteorologists in community emergency management centers, LaMarre said, to help when extreme weather strikes.
But NWS offices “have to be fully staffed in order to do that,” he added. “That’s where kind of the challenge is now.”
A tornado hits Virginia Beach
Dave Topczynski, director of the Department of Emergency Management in Virginia Beach, Virginia, knows firsthand the benefits of having a weather expert on site.
In April 2023, the local NWS office in Wakefield, Virginia, sent a meteorologist to work from Topczynski’s operations center during a local music festival. It was a big event, but the weather looked iffy and the forecast office had staff to spare.
The team was expecting a thunderstorm at worst. But to everyone’s surprise — including the forecasters — the clouds spawned a powerful tornado, the strongest ever to strike the coastal town. It went on to damage more than 100 homes.
Yet no lives were lost that day, thanks in part to the embedded meteorologist, who helped spot the twister coming with enough time to warn the community and evacuate the festival.
The experience was so positive that Topczynski went on to hire a private meteorology service to assist him with weather-related decisionmaking. The Wakefield forecasters are still primary partners, he added, but he’d gotten a taste for on-demand support and it proved more than the local NWS office could accommodate.
“I tell people all the time in emergency management — if it’s a hazmat matter, you bring in subject matter experts. If it’s a bomb incident, we bring in the bomb people,” Topczynski said. The same goes for extreme weather. “Why do you think you know more about hurricanes?”
On the flip side, the deadly floods in central Texas this summer have led to more scrutiny of both NWS and local emergency managers, bringing calls for closer collaboration between the two.
Two NWS offices in the area were missing some of their top meteorologist roles, including positions that serve in part as liaisons between forecasters and local officials. No evidence has suggested the vacancies contributed to the disaster’s deadly outcome, but the news reignited concerns about the potential for errors and communication breakdowns at understaffed offices.
Disaster specialists also have pointed to major shortcomings in the response of local officials in Kerr County, where most of the deaths occurred. Reports have revealed that county leaders missed meetings with state emergency management officials in the days leading up to the disaster, slept through the start of the floods and took hours to issue alerts through a county warning system.
Embedding weather experts in emergency operations centers provides extra support during crises. But it can also help officials with extreme weather training and long-term planning, said Spinrad, the former NOAA administrator — helping ensure they’re better prepared when the next disaster strikes.
“A lot of it is around training and responsiveness and equipping the emergency managers,” he said.
LaMarre, the former NWS program manager, said he’s hopeful the agency will soon advertise new roles for embedded specialists.
But he’s mindful that the spring’s workforce reductions are an obstacle. Some local offices are still struggling to staff all their shifts, he said, and the agency should prioritize the places with the most critical needs.
That means Graham’s dream may move forward — but slower than it would have a year ago.
“The agency is going through that kind of triage,” LaMarre said. “Trying to bring back staffing just to maintain 24/7 operations across the country.”
