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Just after sunrise and again before sunset each day, a white balloon, nearly as tall as a person, floats into the Ruskin sky.
A little weather instrument dangles from it, collecting data as the balloon drifts up, up, up into the atmosphere collecting data.
In late April, the sky was a vibrant blue, dotted with puffy clouds, when Brian LaMarre launched a weather balloon for the last time at the Tampa Bay National Weather Service office.
LaMarre, 52, was one of hundreds of National Weather Service employees who left the agency earlier this year. The weather service offered early retirement, and after 30 years of work, LaMarre took it.
“It was a difficult decision to make,” he said.
LaMarre‘s departure follows the Trump administration’s January directive to the Department of Government Efficiency to “trim the fat” in the federal government. Since then, federal weather and disaster agencies have been hollowed out. Some, like LaMarre, were given an option to leave; others were fired.
With another hurricane season almost upon us, it’s unclear how staffing changes may impact the accuracy of weather and hurricane forecasts. But experts are sounding the alarm. They say cuts to weather agencies could endanger people come hurricane season — when precise forecasts save lives.
The belt-tightening is expected to affect nearly all stages of storm resiliency, said Samantha Montano, a professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy.
“Our system, generally across the country, was already under-resourced, under-funded, understaffed, and now it’s even more so,” Montano said. “And it’s just not going to be possible for emergency managers to do as much as we theoretically could to save lives during hurricanes.”
In the federal weather world, staffing woes
About 550 people have left the National Weather Service, or about 10% of its staff, since government cuts began this year, according to a letter written by former directors of the agency in early May.
Tampa Bay’s office is down six positions, of which two are considered “operational,” LaMarre said. Operational employees are meteorologists that work on a rotating 24/7 schedule.
According to a staffing list, the Tampa Bay office is missing one senior meteorologist out of six and one meteorologist out of seven. Both roles were vacant before the start of the year.
LaMarre began at the Tampa Bay office as the meteorologist-in-charge in 2007, acting as the office supervisor. In September, he took on a new role with the agency, while remaining in Ruskin. Another meteorologist has filled in the supervisor gap since, he said.
“As far as staffing, the Florida offices are actually in pretty good shape,” LaMarre said. “Miami and Key West are kind of joining together a little bit to help one another.”
The Tallahassee, Miami and Keys offices appear to be down three meteorologists each, according to the Miami Herald.
The weather service is offering to pay moving expenses to staff willing to transfer to critically understaffed teams, according to reporting from The Washington Post.
“There’s some offices across the country that are extremely short staffed, and what the agency is doing, they’re grouping offices into like these mini hubs,” LaMarre said.
The agency is referring to the practice as “mutual aid.”
Mutual aid allows offices to share resources, such as people and technology. It may mean offices are providing forecasts and warnings for areas outside of their typical reach.
“For example, the Tampa office could provide backup for Jacksonville, for Melbourne, for Miami,” LaMarre said. “We can do that; we don’t have to do that right now.”
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been reduced by about 11%, according to the New York Times. The agency has cut about 800 employees and confirmed about 500 people will take buyouts.
Workers have been caught in a limbo of confusing firings and rehirings for much of this year.
For example, two National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Hurricane Hunter flight directors were let go but later rehired, according to a spokesperson for the agency.
Holes in data could spell trouble
In March, the weather service confirmed it was temporarily suspending routine weather balloon launches in Nebraska and North Dakota due to staffing shortages.
While balloon launches have been reduced to once a day in midwestern states, LaMarre said the Tampa Bay office has continued the typical twice-a-day readings. Still, even the faraway reductions may affect Florida forecasts.
“All around the world, all these balloons go up in the atmosphere at the same time, collecting all the same measurements, and we’re able to get a complete picture of what the atmosphere looks like around the world,” Vagasky said.
This data is fed into computer models. These computer models can provide forecasts for the next six hours or up to two weeks in advance.
One small, inaccurate reading or gap can create a snowball effect.
Data must be precise, otherwise the model will have to estimate the missing temperature, or other weather-related data. More guessing means more room for errors in the forecast.
“This sort of suspension, and this sort of missing launches is something that I can’t remember seeing in the United States in the time that I’ve been a meteorologist,” said Vagasky, who has worked in weather for about 20 years.
Hurricanes and tropical storms are steered by other storm and high pressure systems across the globe.
To have an accurate forecast days in advance, officials need to understand the steering currents that could influence the hurricane’s direction, which means taking measurements in places like Colorado or Nebraska, said Jeff Masters said, a meteorologist and writer for Yale Climate Connections.
A hurricane track could show a storm making landfall in Fort Myers, but missing data could hinder a forecast’s accuracy. In reality, the storm could be making a beeline for Tampa.
More cuts could be coming
A federal budget proposal would cut off a leg of funding for education and research related to climate in its 2026 budget.
The Trump administration has moved against climate-related research and policy since taking office, including scrubbing the term “climate change” from federal websites.
The budget proposal states that cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration‘s grant programs will stop climate-related research “not aligned” with the Trump administration’s push to end Green New Deal policies.
The weed-whacking would come after the National Hurricane Center had its best forecasting season ever, according to a hurricane center report grading its 2024 forecasts, including Helene and Milton, two of Tampa Bay’s most devastating storms in recent history.
Andy Hazelton was laid off from his probationary role working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration‘s Environmental Modeling Center in February (he was rehired and then officially fired again in April).
Hazelton’s job consisted of testing and improving computer models used to track storms. He estimated of the 30 or so colleagues he worked with, about a quarter were fired or took a voluntary buyout.
Hazelton said he’s unsure how quickly the public may see a drop in quality, but with fewer people and resources it will be difficult to make improvements to models.
“Certainly it’s hard because those forecast improvements were a result of a lot of hard work and lot of investment in people and computer power,” Hazelton said.
The proposed budget propelled former weather service directors, dating to 1988, to pen a letter condemning the cuts.
Louis Uccellini, a former director of the National Weather Service from 2013 to 2022 said the weather service about 14 years ago began building what it calls a “weather-ready-nation,” meant to improve resiliency to extreme weather, and to build relationships with emergency managers and public safety officials.
A leaner workforce puts this model at risk because meteorologists are unable to attend practice sessions with local emergency leaders or be available for severe weather trainings, Uccellini said.
Montano, the maritime academy professor, said the cuts are coming amid increasing risk of severe weather due to human-caused climate change.
“This should be a time that we should doubling down and expanding our emergency management resources, expanding our resources of the National Weather Service,” Montano said.
Warmer waters driven by burning fossil fuels have laid the groundwork for storms to rapidly intensify. Montano argued that climate change research needs to be funded to understand how to plan for it.
LaMarre, the Tampa weather service meteorologist who took early retirement, said he’ll continue to work in weather by creating his own consulting business.
He knows his former colleagues have challenges ahead of them.
LaMarre maintains his fondness for his time in Ruskin ― including a simple weather balloon launch.
“I started my career by doing it,” he said, “and I ended my career by doing it.”
The Tampa Bay Times launched the Environment Hub in 2025 to focus on some of Florida’s most urgent and enduring challenges. You can contribute through our journalism fund by clicking here.
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