NOAA firings came just before a U.S. tornado outbreak. Did public warning systems work?

After severe storms swept across the U.S. in mid March, killing more than 40 people, social media posts blamed the Trump administration’s recent firings for weakening emergency communication systems.

"Catastrophic tornadoes rip through the southeast and warning systems were not operational because of the Ketamine Kid disbanding the National Weather Service warning system through DOGE!" a March 15 Threads post read. The "Ketamine Kid" appears to be a reference to President Donald Trump’s adviser Elon Musk, who has said in interviews that he takes prescription ketamine. 

"Folks hit by tornadoes had no tornado warnings … no sirens," a March 16 X post read. "Americans are unsafe without (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)." 

A March 15 X post that also mentioned Musk said, "I’ve seen reports that people didn’t get tornado alerts on their phones last night, and tornado sirens didn’t go off in their areas." 

NOAA spearheads research on oceans, the atmosphere, space and sun. Its National Weather Service branch provides U.S. weather, water and climate forecasts. 

The Trump administration fired 800 of NOAA’s 12,909 employees Feb. 27, according to news reports. Trump tapped Musk to lead his new Department of Government Efficiency, which has undertaken efforts to slash government spending. The NOAA firings targeted probationary employees, those who have worked one to three years in their current positions. 

JoAnn Becker, national president of the National Weather Service Employees Organization, told PBS on March 14 that more than 500 probationary NOAA employees were initially terminated, including 108 National Weather Service employees. Some have been reinstated, but it’s unclear how many. 

Contrary to the posts’ claims, warning systems were operational except for a communications issue in Kansas City, National Weather Service spokesperson Susan Buchanan said. She added that no tornado warnings were needed in the Kansas City areas affected by the outage.

These recent weather events did not appear to overwhelm overall emergency communications and response systems following the Trump administration’s cuts. Still, weather experts told PolitiFact they are concerned that the staffing changes will have long-term impact on weather prediction and public safety.

"With reduced staffing, there is the potential for fewer ‘eyes on the storm,’" said Joe Sullivan,a Kentucky Emergency Management meteorologist who also worked for 13 years as a NWS warning coordination meteorologist. Sullivan said he relies on information from the NWS and NOAA Storm Prediction Center in his current job.

Buchanan told PolitiFact that "warning and dissemination systems were working normally" during the March 14 to 16 tornado outbreak, and cell phone alerts went out as planned.

"NWS covered all of its forecast shifts during the outbreak," Buchanan said.

She attributed the outage of six NWS radio transmitters linked to the Kansas City forecast office to a "telecommunications issue."

The affected communities were alerted to thunderstorm warnings through other platforms, she said; NWS does not activate cell phone alerts for thunderstorm warnings. NWS Kansas City published severe thunderstorm warnings on its X account.

PolitiFact found one news report that two people in Tylertown, Mississippi, did not receive a warning alert, but the report did not elaborate on why they didn’t receive one. We did not find any other news reports of widespread warning system outages.

We saw multiple Facebook users posting that they successfully received public safety alerts warning of the weekend’s tornadoes.

The NOAA Storm Prediction Center also shares information about tornado watches, including during the recent tornado outbreak, on its website and social media.

Sirens are operated by city or county officials, not the NWS.

Alerts are distributed in several ways, including outdoor warning sirens, through local media and NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards. Alerts that look like text messages also are sent to cell phones and mobile devices, through a warning system operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. 

These alerts will be delivered "even if cellular networks are overloaded," according to FEMA. But some people may not receive these alerts. That could happen for a number of reasons, including if their device is older and incapable of receiving wireless emergency alerts; they have not manually changed their device settings to enable alerts; they opted out of the alerts; or their service provider doesn’t participate in wireless emergency alerts.

The first test of the national wireless emergency system by the Federal Emergency Management Agency is shown on a cellular phone at the White House in Washington, Oct. 3, 2018. (AP)

Because information on recently terminated NOAA employees is sparse, it’s hard to know exactly how these systems might have been altered in the wake of the cuts. We don’t have a full accounting of who was cut or where.

Some meteorologists across the agency publicly revealed they were among those terminated. NOAA fired five hurricane hunters who were on probationary status, then later rehired three of them.

A Maryland U.S. district judge issued a temporary restraining order March 13 halting terminations across the federal government and ordering fired probationary workers to be hired back.

Apart from the terminations, the National Weather Service union said 170 employees took the White House’s deferred resignation package. Another 1,029 positions across NOAA are still expected to be eliminated, based on news reports.

Experts expressed concern that cuts across NOAA would affect forecasting systems’ reliability and accuracy. "Ideally, multiple forecasters are monitoring potentially severe storms, frequently by ‘sectorizing’ operations," Sullivan said, describing a process by which forecasters split up an area so that each is responsible for monitoring fewer storms. "With reduced staffing, each meteorologist may be tasked with monitoring more storms, increasing the risk a subtle signature may be missed or seen in a less timely fashion."

The lead time to warn about fast-developing tornados often spans only a few minutes. And when it comes to small, weak tornadoes that last two to three minutes, Sullivan said it is "extremely common" for them to go undetected by radar. 

The NOAA Storm Prediction Center issues tornado watches, which signal the likelihood of tornadoes in the area and are ideally issued at least two hours before the first tornado is expected to occur, while local National Weather Service Forecast Offices issue tornado warnings, when a tornado is observed and urge people to find safe shelter. In some cases, tornado warnings are issued 15 to 20 minutes in advance.

Storm forecasters combine weather observations and weather prediction models to determine the likelihood of severe weather.

Sullivan also highlighted how important NWS’s electronics technicians are. When National Weather Radio transmitter sites experience outages, these technicians have the skills to troubleshoot and restore them, he said. They also reboot critical communications equipment prior to anticipated severe weather events, Sullivan said.

"Job cuts will result in reduced reliability of systems such as the weather radars that are critical for providing tornado warnings," Rick Spinrad, who served as NOAA’s administrator during the Biden administration, told PolitiFact. "Those radars rely on having a full staff of technicians, as well as full sets of supplies for repair and maintenance."

On Feb. 27 and March 7, the NWS announced it was suspending weather balloon launches in Kotzebue, Alaska; Albany, New York; and Gray, Maine because of a lack of staffing. It also announced March 20 that it was reducing weather balloon launches to one flight per day — down from twice daily — in multiple areas, and suspending weather balloon observations at Omaha, Nebraska and Rapid City, South Dakota.

That means a reduction in data that forecasters rely on.

"These launches provide the basis for computer models of the atmosphere that are used on a daily basis by not only the U.S., but the rest of the world's meteorologists," Sullivan said.

In their absence, forecasters will rely on estimates that Sullivan said haven’t been proven to be a sufficient replacement for physical instruments’ readings.