Staff cuts forced this forecast office to shut overnight. Then a tornado hit.
Scott Dance, “Washington Post”, 5/17/25
If not for the storms, the critically understaffed National Weather Service office responsible for monitoring weather hazards across eastern Kentucky would have gone dark by midnight. It’s one of a growing number the agency’s local offices that have been unable to cover an overnight shift since the Trump administration significantly reduced staffing levels through buyouts and firings earlier this year…
It posed the latest test for a beleaguered Weather Service corps that has endured a season of dangerous storms and floods while facing major upheaval in their offices. The forecasting office in Jackson, Kentucky, is four meteorologists short of what agency officials have deemed ideal staffing — a 31 percent vacancy rate that makes 24/7 operations impossible, according to the union that represents Weather Service staff. [Note: the Courts just ruled that the Orange Sadist can outlaw unions in federal organizations.]…
Fully staffed, the Jackson office would have 13 meteorologists. But it’s currently down to nine, he said. Two management positions are also vacant — including the top role of meteorologist-in-charge, which has been vacant since last year — as are slots for three technical specialists, he added.
[Coverage of the storm was only successful because meteorologists from other locations offered to/were instructed to come in. Is this the way an educated nation should be run?]
I will answer your question with another question: Have you seen the movie “Idiocracy”?
This reminds me of the publisher of a short-lived gaming magazine I was Senior Editor on, who kept trumpeting his "Lean&Mean" strategy to produce the magazine cheaply. This strategy consisted of me pulling three jobs, including re-copy editing the borderline illiterate writing of the Editor-in-Chief, Mr. Dunning-Kruger (who rewrote every article to sound Just Like Him!), a duty I pulled my wife in to help me with as an unpaid copy editor(!—we invoiced the publisher, but he never bothered to pay her for her time); him trying to put on a big show at E3 despite not being able to afford to hire anybody other than those few of us already on staff, or even to pay for a sign other than the generic one provided by E3's organizers; and ultimately not even paying the four of us working full-time.
Anybody "looking to cut waste" or running a "lean&mean operation"? Is likely either a crook pocketing the extra money himself, or a blithering incompetent who doesn't have the first idea of what he's doing.