Tag: National Weather Service

Commerce chief threatened firings at NOAA after Trump’s hurricane tweets, sources say

WASHINGTON – The secretary of commerce threatened to fire top employees at the federal scientific agency responsible for weather forecasts last Friday after the agency’s Birmingham, Alabama, office contradicted President Donald Trump’s claim that Hurricane Dorian might hit Alabama, according to three people familiar with the discussion.

That threat led to an unusual, unsigned statement later that Friday by the agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, disavowing the National Weather Service’s position that Alabama was not at risk. The reversal caused widespread anger within the agency and drew accusations from the scientific community that the National Weather Service, which is part of NOAA, had been bent to political purposes.

NOAA’s statement on Friday is now being examined by the Commerce Department’s Office of Inspector General, according to documents reviewed by the New York Times, and employees have been asked to preserve their files. NOAA is a division of the Commerce Department.

View the complete September 10 article by Peter Baker, Christopher Flavelle and Lisa Friedman from The New York Times on The StarTribune website here.

‘You feel trapped’: The shutdown’s impact on Minnesota’s weather service

Unpaid but unable to take time off, Chanhassen’s NWS workers are finding the shutdown tough.

Their paychecks are frozen just as the ground is in Minnesota this time of year, but 38 employees of the National Weather Service office in Chanhassen continue to show up to work every day as mission-critical government employees.

Each day they arrive at the office knowing their next paycheck might be weeks or even months away, but they continue educating and informing the public about pending weather events, like the winter storm preparing to layer the ground in southern Minnesota with 5-8 inches of snow on Friday.

For some employees, the shutdown threatens their ability to pay bills on time, forcing them to make a few extra bucks through side hustles they never thought they’d need, all while hoping their applications for unemployment benefits are accepted.

View the complete January 17 article on the Bring Me the News website here.