4mo ago

Chaos as Trump cuts to NOAA lead to staffers receiving deluge of spam emails

www.theguardian.com

‘Chaos’: Trump cuts to Noaa disrupt staffing and weather forecasts

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.

17 comments

Can't wait for our already mediocre ability to Forcast weather gets much worse.
- Yeah it’s not like farmers, who produce food, and effect things like EGG PRICES rely on the weather to do their jobs…
- N=1 and all, but last night they did an absolutely stellar job with the high risk forcast, and under the strain of this admin no less.
- But you have AccuWeather though.
  
  That's true, we should privatize the whole thing and charge people money to look at the weather.
  
  Where do you think AccuWeather gets their data?
Another goal of project 2025. Soon we'll have the privilege of paying more for a worse service, with the added bonus of the Nazi trump regime getting to lie about inconcenvient news like the sharpie bullshit with the hurricane some years ago.
FYI: WeatherUnderground is basically crowdsourced using off-the-shelf weather stations you can put in your backyard, on top of public data from NASA, NOAA, ECAD, ESA, etc. The only downside is there aren't many civilians in the middle of the ocean, so hurricane tracking will be lacking if NASA and NOAA do get neutered.
For anyone wanting to contribute, here's a few popular stations:
AcuRite Pro Weather Station
Ambient Weather WS-2902
- Not discounting that (it's a cool project), but NOAA/NWS are the ones that issue the EAS severe weather alerts (when your phone/TV/radio goes all REEET REEEEET REEEET letting you know shit's getting real). Some severe weather you can plan for based on forecast (snow storms, some thunderstorms), others you need constant eyes on and as much warning as possible (tornadoes).
  And tornado season is coming up, so....yeah, buckle up, Midwest.
  Edit: Also, I feel your username lol.
unsecured email server
WAS IT HILLARY CLINTONS??!??!1!?
- Buttery males
It doesn't seem very efficient to cut staff and then force the remaining people to cover the labor gaps while simultaneously sifting through spam emails, but what do I know

17 comments