Summary
NOAA is facing turmoil as over 1,000 staff have been fired or resigned under Trump’s push to downsize the federal workforce, with 1,000 more cuts expected.
Elon Musk’s DOGE has disrupted weather operations, including halting weather balloon launches and briefly firing hurricane tracking staff.
A faulty, unsecured email server flooded employees with spam, symbolizing the chaos.
Critics warn the cuts threaten public safety, climate research, and marine oversight. Protests have emerged as staff face uncertainty and deteriorating agency operations.
That’s true, we should privatize the whole thing and charge people money to look at the weather.
For those unaware (not the parent commenter), that’s literally the plan. It’s the post-Soviet model of blatant corruption, creating oligarchs by selling off government assets at fire-sale prices to their cronies.
It’s brilliant, see how well it worked in the RF!
AccuWeather has been working on the privatization and monopolization of weather forecasting for a long time. They’ve been smelling the shareholder value for years.