After Months of Short-Staffing, Trump Cuts, Bay Area NWS Could Hire More Meteorologists

The National Weather Service plans to fill two vacancies for meteorologists who forecast daily weather for the public and airspace above the Bay Area, after the agency lost more than 500 employees earlier this year during the Trump administration’s deep federal cuts.

The potential hirings aren’t totally official yet, but the federal government may post the jobs in the next week, according to Dalton Behringer, the Bay Area office’s union steward for the National Weather Service Employees Organization.

Once hired, they could help bolster weather reports for two offices that have operated for months with limited staff. The news comes as temperatures across the Bay Area are heating up, passengers are departing for summertime travels, and wildfire risk is growing.

The cuts earlier this year included at least three people at the National Weather Service’s Bay Area office in Monterey — a meteorologist, an administrative support assistant and a facilities technician. The three employees were relatively new to their jobs and received emails notifying them of their termination before their supervisors were aware.

Behringer said the administration has so far promised to restore one meteorologist position in Monterey, but noted the union has asked the administration to fill the administrative support position.

“The trend’s looking in the right direction,” Behringer said. “We certainly need more than one position per office with several vacancies, and we’re still doing mutual aid for some of our neighboring offices.”

For months, a single full-time meteorologist, with aid from other offices, has staffed the National Weather Service’s Fremont-based Center Weather Service Unit in Oakland after a forecaster there retired. The unit already had two vacant positions when President Donald Trump ordered a federal hiring freeze on Jan. 20.

The meteorologist works with air traffic controllers at a command center in Fremont. Their role is to provide real-time weather updates seven days a week, forecasting any turbulence from around 40,000 feet in the air down to the runway.

That meteorologist could soon have a second trained permanent colleague to relieve the stress of forecasting weather conditions in the Bay Area’s massive airspace.

“I can’t even tell you how much overtime he’s been working and then double shifts here and there,” Behringer said. “As the lone wolf, it is pretty daunting with the Bay Area air traffic. So, in morale alone, having a second set of eyes permanently will be huge.”

On top of the coming hires, Behringer said last month, the administration classified National Weather Service employees as necessary for public safety.

“That means that meteorologists will be exempt from all future hiring freezes, and we are exempt from any of the reduction-in-force policies that are still to come,” Behringer said.