The nation's cash-strapped weather-forecasting system, though partly spared from federal budget cuts known as sequestration, is about to get pinched on the verge of a hurricane season expected to be busier than normal.
Federal officials say they have the resources to warn storm-prone areas about weather emergencies, but a federal union representative warns that a hiring freeze plus furloughs threaten public safety.
Aircraft known as Hurricane Hunters will keep flying into storms to measure wind speed and air pressure, though their flight crews will have to take turns being furloughed. Weather satellites will remain on track, though the offices that monitor them will get squeezed.
Officials say they can maintain adequate staffing at the National Hurricane Center near Miami, though its forecasters will be forced to take off four unpaid days by Sept. 30. Staff at the National Weather Service already is depleted because of a hiring freeze.
"This could have a detrimental effect on everybody's public safety," said Bob Ebaugh, the steward in Miami for the National Weather Service Employees Organization. "Once you start limiting staffing, you start raising the potential for disaster."
He said furloughs could hamper the NWS' ability to predict wildfire and tornado conditions during the spring and to pinpoint where storms might hit land during the summer. Citing 250 vacancies throughout the Weather Service, Ebaugh said the agency "saves money from not filling those positions, which just caused more stress on the rest of the employees."
This mix of warnings and assurances comes on the heels of an extraordinary year of storms, flooding, blizzards and droughts -- 11 separate billion-dollar disasters in 2012, capped by Superstorm Sandy. Weather-conscious Florida, where a tourism economy depends on the great outdoors, has the most at stake from any gaps in forecasting.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/23/hurricane-season-budget-cuts_n_3142713.html?utm_hp_ref=weather
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