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Tornado warnings delayed because of DOGE cuts
- sanderjd 1y agoThis seems entirely plausible, but I'm not sure this article successfully makes this connection with direct evidence. Has anyone seen anything on this with better evidence?
- atotic 1y agoNYT mentioned NWS staffing shortage, but did not say this was connected to body count: "The office is also one of several left without an overnight forecaster, but on Friday, it stayed open and was sufficiently staffed for the night, issuing 11 tornado warnings. It was “all hands on deck,” Mr. Fahy said."
- casefields 1y agoThat's because no one can make that conclusion definitively yet. They want your brain to assume that connection. Conspiracy theorists are the kings at this psychological trick.
- Abimelex 1y agoThat's mostly the thing with safety measurements. If they are there you do not recognize them and if they are missing and something happens it's hard to proof if it would have changed anything. Have a look on "Heuristics That Almost Always Work" https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/heuristics-that-almost-always-work https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/heuristics-that-almost-alwa...
- throw0101d 1y ago> That's because no one can make that conclusion definitively yet. There's a problem here though: if things do eventually deteriorate (which, admittedly, there is a change will not happen), it may be too late to fix things. If things get broken they are broken, and in this case you have risk of people's lives. And the people who did the jobs that were fired have probably moved on because they have bills to pay. If you can realize your mistake quickly enough, you can fix it quickly. This is what happened when the Very Stable Geniuses fired the folks who maintained US nuclear weapons: * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43130613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43130613 Perhaps instead of l33t h4ck3rz in DOGE they should hire carpenters or woodworkers: people who, instead of a mantra of "move fast and break things", live more by "measure twice and cut once". Some measure of where the (alleged) waste is could be useful before cutting.
- sanderjd 1y agoI agree that DOGE is bad. But I also think it's unhelpful to claim evidence of a bad outcome directly caused by what they've done. It muddies the water and bolsters people who want to argue that people are only criticizing them out of bias. If it's true that they got all the tornado warnings out because they were able to be "all hands on deck" for a night they knew would have high risk, then I think this just isn't the example of DOGE getting people killed that the article wants it to be. I fully believe that understaffing these offices could get people killed. But we don't need to claim it did until it does. And that doesn't mean we should wait for something awful to happen to criticize the risky situation!
- nisa 1y agonytimes on the cuts in this area: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/16/weather/nws-cuts-kentucky-tornado.html?unlocked_article_code=1.H08.hofJ.1I5Ja7lu8_Jo&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=g https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/16/weather/nws-cuts-kentucky...
- sanderjd 1y agoThanks! The information here is why I think it's extremely plausible that staffing shortages were disastrous here. But it also doesn't make the direct link. I think it's probably just too soon to know whether all the warnings went out as they should. But another problem with our current government is that I'm skeptical any investigation to answer those questions will ever happen.
- jmclnx 1y agoSadly anyone with a a half of a brain saw this coming. To add to this, FEMA cuts probably means these poor people will live through what Puerto Rico did when the island was wiped out years ago by that hurricane :( I wish they could sue Trump and Musk personally for making dumb decisions.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- HideousKojima 1y ago>FEMA cuts probably means these poor people will live through what Puerto Rico did when the island was wiped out years ago by that hurricane :( Why didn't a well-funded FEMA prevent what happened in Puerto Rico?
- harimau777 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Maria#Criticism_of_U.S._government_response https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Maria#Criticism_of_U...
- HideousKojima 1y agoDoesn't cover the internal incompetence within FEMA (despite significant funding) nearly enough: https://www.npr.org/2018/07/13/628861808/fema-report-acknowledges-failures-in-puerto-rico-disaster-response https://www.npr.org/2018/07/13/628861808/fema-report-acknowl...
- viraptor 1y agohttps://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/fema-report-acknowledges-failures-in-puerto-rico-disaster-response/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/fema-report-ackno... has a summary
- HideousKojima 1y ago>The FEMA report found that its warehouse in Puerto Rico was nearly empty when Hurricane Maria hit last September, without cots or tarps, and very low levels of food and water, as most of the supplies had been rerouted to the U.S. Virgin Islands following Hurricane Irma. Yeah, so how did a massive agency with plenty of money (over $30 BILLION annually) not immediately begin work to restock their Puerto Rico warehouses immediately after some of the supplies were sent to help with hurricane Irma? That's roughly $1.5 million per employee of FEMA, so they should have plenty of funds after personnel costs for buying and transporting whatever emergency supplies they need.
- pablowegw 1y ago[flagged]
- shepherdjerred 1y agoPart of me doesn’t feel too much sympathy. The majority of Americans voted for Trump. Even more so in the conservative states that are more likely to be impacted by there events. Trump campaigned on cutting government services. Everyone is okay with cutting a public service (at the expense of others) until they need that particular service --- To clarify, I'm not cheering on this disaster or hoping that those who voted for Trump "get what they deserve"
- atomicnumber3 1y agoUnfortunately, a lot of liberals live in these states too. This entire country would be blue if we didn't have the electoral college. But if you're in the mood for not feeling sympathy, because most cities have heat domes that tend to "push" storms away from them, storms tend to leave the more-liberal cities alone and instead wreak havoc through more rural towns.
- shepherdjerred 1y agoTo me, it's more of "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" situation
- HideousKojima 1y ago[flagged]
- arghandugh 1y agoAntipathy for the innocent and a pleasure in collateral suffering and death is a key tenet of conservatism. Maybe clean up your soul a bit.
- mullingitover 1y agoNot a majority of Americans, a plurality of voters. They won power, barely, but they don’t have a mandate.
- trilbyglens 1y agoIn states like Kentucky a d Oklahoma? Think again. These places are overwhelmingly trumpy. The nation as a whole barely voted him in, but in many red states his numbers are very high. My home county in Tx voted 80% Trump.
- JKCalhoun 1y agoWelcome to 2025, where we gather the family around a glowing laptop watching Ryan Hall Y'all and his YouTube channel telling us when it's time to take shelter.
- fixprix 1y ago"Tornado warnings were delayed because of reduced staff." Source? How long was the delay? Edit: Really? Downvote me for asking a super simple question? Sorry if I threaten the narrative.
- Justsignedup 1y agoRight up top. The service for alerts no longer works 24/7 so this happened when they were down for their daily window. Therefore the cuts are directly responsible.
- fixprix 1y agoLook I found a real source, not conjecture. How hard was that? https://www.weku.org/the-commonwealth/2025-05-17/kentucky-nws-office-in-jackson-was-staffed-amid-severe-weather-despite-shortages https://www.weku.org/the-commonwealth/2025-05-17/kentucky-nw...
- 0xEF 1y agoIf you can and are willing, join Skywarn and help with weather spotting in your area. You do not need a radio license as things can be called in by phone, too. https://www.weather.gov/skywarn/ https://www.weather.gov/skywarn/
- radnor 1y agoFortunately the Kentucky NWS office in Jackson was fully staffed during the recent events. It's still not staffed 24/7, but at least they bring in people when things inclement weather is occuring. https://www.weku.org/the-commonwealth/2025-05-17/kentucky-nws-office-in-jackson-was-staffed-amid-severe-weather-despite-shortages https://www.weku.org/the-commonwealth/2025-05-17/kentucky-nw...
- Jtsummers 1y agoStaffed, but not fully staffed. They worked around their staff shortages to make sure they had people working during the storm.
- jrs235 1y agoThey may have been been "fully staffed" according to the "new" "fully staffed" number which could be not enough to perform all the duties and responsibilities reliably and without disruptions. I've been on teams that ought to have 5-10 people minimally wearing all the hats but are only by budgeted for and allow 3 by upper management. Those teams, according to the decision makers are fully staffed, even though they are inadequate. Edit: and during death marches those can be worked overtime on weekends to make a deadline. They're "fully staffed" and work for the short-term until burnout and turnover begins. Then those projects are always behind.
- Aeyxen 1y agoThe thread keeps circling around the politics, but almost nobody has dug into what actually goes on in the NWS tornado warning pipeline. It's worth being specific: the National Weather Service operates some of the most robust automation and radar ingest pipelines on Earth, but the final go/no-go warning call is almost always human—often a single overnight forecaster on a console, monitoring a swath of counties. Automation (e.g., Warn-on-Forecast guidance) can surface threats, but the NWS intentionally doesn't have an 'auto-warn' button for tornadoes, because of the asymmetry of false positives (blow credibility, cost lives in the long run). Budget cuts reduce redundancy and experience in those overnight shifts. When you have only one person monitoring instead of a team of two or three, you get decision fatigue and coverage holes, especially during clustered, multi-cell outbreaks. We've seen near-misses in the past, and every pro-meteorologist I know says they're playing defense against process errors, not just technology failures. Before we point fingers or blame 'technology/automation' shortfalls, let's quantify the concrete bottleneck: skilled human decision-makers are the limiting reagent; machine learning warning aids are still years away from majority trust.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- siilats 1y agoyeah why cannot that guy sit in california or new york in a normal time zone? not like there are tornadoes in every state, its so silly to keep a person at night in an office when weather is good
- fmorel 1y agoThere's only a 6 hour different between the East coast and Hawaii. You can't entirely avoid a night shift, so you might as well have them all work from the same location.
- johnnyanmac 1y ago>Before we point fingers or blame 'technology/automation' shortfalls, let's quantify the concrete bottleneck: skilled human decision-makers are the limiting reagent All the automation in the world with useless without a human guide to either transform production into a useful product, or useful knowledge to heed. That's why this act of trying to remove human labor is asinine. Even skilled human can't always get the right readings, so expecting a robot to do it all at this stage is just selling snake oil.