Alabama’s preeminent meteorologist defended workers with the National Weather Service on Tuesday as Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency takes aim at the agency overseeing the NWS with job and budget cuts.

Hundreds of weather forecasters and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration employees were fired Thursday in the latest wave of cuts from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, sparking concern among local forecasters and emergency officials.

Hurricane and climate researchers were hit in the latest wave of cuts from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. The mass layoffs from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — more than 600,

Hundreds of weather forecasters and other federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration employees on probationary status were fired Thursday, lawmakers and weather experts said, as billionaire Elon Musk aims to shrink a federal workforce that President Donald Trump has called bloated and sloppy.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is the latest federal agency to have been targeted by Elon Musk's DOGE committee. This week, the Commerce Department began

Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency has targeted federal agencies like USAID, CFPB, and NOAA to reduce government spending.

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The layoffs, criticized as “short-sighted,” reportedly include meteorologists who did crucial local forecasts in National Weather Service offices across the country.

Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, said on social media that the job cuts "are spectacularly short-sighted, and ultimately will deal a major self-inflicted wound to the public safety of Americans and the resiliency of the American economy to weather and climate-related disasters.”

The people who once ran the federal weather and oceans agency say it touches people’s daily lives in unnoticed ways and that massive firings there could cause needless deaths and a big hit to America’s economy.