At the start of the hurricane season, one meteorologist in South Florida is warning that they will not be able to accurately predict and track storms due to federal cuts by the Donald Trump administration.
John Morales, a meteorologist at NBC 6 South Florida, interrupted a recent live broadcast to issue the dire warning to his viewers in the hurricane-prone state.
In the show, Morales highlighted a forecast he did during Hurricane Dorian, a Category 5 storm, in 2019 after it made landfall in the Bahamas and appeared to be heading straight for Florida.
At the time Morales assured viewers that the hurricane was “going to turn [away from the coast]. The turn was never forecast to be on Sunday. … The turn will come Monday afternoon, Monday evening into Tuesday.”
“Remember that?” Morales said. “Confidently, I went on TV and told you it’s going to turn, you don’t need to worry. I’m here to tell you that I’m not sure I can do that this year, because of the cuts, the gutting, the sledgehammer attack on science in general.”
The hurricane season officially began on Sunday and lasts through November. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicted up to 10 hurricanes this year.
Since January, the Trump administration has laid off thousands of workers at the NOAA. The National Weather Service (NWS) offices that were already stretched thin are now force to curtailed its data collection to adjust to the new reality of fewer staff thus making forecasts less accurate.
Morales noted that NWS offices across South and Central Florida are already 20% to 40% understaffed. There’s also been a 20% reduction in weather balloon launches, which collect atmospheric data like wind speed, humidity, pressure. Also, there are cuts to NOAA’s Hurricane Hunter flight program which means that the aircrafts might not be able to fly at all this year.
“And what were starting to see is that the quality of the forecast is becoming degraded,” Morales added.
He ended the segment by urging viewers to calls their representatives “and make sure that these cuts are stopped.”
