Thread by @EricBlake12

Here’s an update now that we are late into the third week of the shutdown- almost everything in that thread has come to pass with more negative things to come. Thread below 👇

https://twitter.com/ericblake12/status/1078333001761738752

Basically all of the federal government @noaa @nasa employees have missed the @ametsoc conference this week. A few scattered contractors were able to attend, but overall a lost opportunity to share ideas, present work and inspire the next class of students.

The first week of intensive hurricane training classes (cohosted with @fema) for emergency management officials/ decision makers is cancelled. As the flagship course for training non-meteorologists how to use NHC/NWS/FEMA products- its absence will hurt US hurricane preparedness

All of the NHC preparedness, outreach, training, education, classes, conferences etc, encompassing 12 plus weeks through May, is on hold. Not to mention any hurricane model testing and forecast improvements.

While essential services continue, our main partners are shutdown- the Environmental Modeling Center is the workhorse for all operational weather models. Yet 99%+ of that agency is furloughed. NHC can’t do much without that agency fully staffed.

Most of the staff is working, on the promise of pay. Few expected that they would miss a paycheck that they need to pay holiday bills (shutdown caught most my surprise), and anxiety is increasing.

The shutdown has also stopped any new hires from coming into our already short-staffed agency, and no one can even transfer within the agency. We’ve already lost two retirements during the shutdown, and will hamper efforts to replace them before hurricane season

People keep saying it doesn’t matter because hurricane season is so far away- dead wrong. In our annual plan we have people working on many different things and we push the schedule to the maximum. These lost 3 weeks can’t simply be absorbed- something will be dropped.

Ironically it is worse to be shutdown now for the hurricane program. All of the upgrades are developed and tested now- nothing huge changes during the season. If we can’t do the research now, then upgrades are postponed to 2020. Really pointless lost opportunities.

The overall message is still that the staff wants to work and be paid and keep improving US hurricane forecasts and readiness. They are a very dedicated group of people that I am honored to represent as Union Steward.

They even have a sense of (dark) humor about the whole thing- this OPM-like pay table is a good one for the insiders...