'There will be chaos': Extreme weather expert says Trump cutting 'backbone of everything'
U.S. President Donald Trump looks on as military strikes are launched against Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis over the group's attacks against Red Sea shipping, at an unspecified location in this handout image released March 15, 2025. White House/Handout via REUTERS
President Donald Trump's administration is drastically increasing the odds of Americans getting caught off-guard by extreme weather, according to one meteorologist.
During a Monday interview with host Dana Bash, CNN meteorologist Derek Van Dam detailed the real-world impacts of the Trump administration's budget cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Van Dam, who focuses on extreme weather, reminded viewers that Americans knew about the most recent spate of tornadoes and severe thunderstorms a week before they hit, thanks to NOAA's staff and equipment.
"NOAA really truly is the invisible backbone of everything that we consume. Not only are they responsible for the availability of the weather and climate data that we pass on to viewers, but also the infrastructure that helps make that data available," Van Dam said. "Think about radar infrastructure. Think about balloon launches that feed weather and climate models. Think about the satellites that monitor our weather from space."
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According to Van Dam, NOAA and the National Weather Service's (NWS) weather predictions impact the U.S. economy in a major way, and industries like agriculture to air transportation are particularly reliant on government-funded weather experts to help them navigate commerce. He warned that cuts to those agencies will have "butterfly effects down the road."
"If we start cutting back and rolling back this personnel, there will be chaos," Van Dam said. "Just take this past weekend ... there were over 300 tornado reports, over 650 severe thunderstorm reports. Remember, those all have a human — intelligent and human — fingerprint behind them when they get issued by these individuals. A human has to see the parameters that define a tornado or a severe thunderstorm. So if we start cutting that personnel, the ability to make those warnings becomes less likely and things could be missed."
The Trump administration already laid off roughly 1,300 NOAA employees last month, and mass firings could be in store for the agency, with TIME magazine reporting that approximately 1,000 more workers in the 13,000-person agency could soon be terminated this quarter. Those mass firings come just months before the start of the 2025 hurricane season on June 1, in which millions of Americans in hurricane-prone areas are relying on weather predictions to time any potential evacuation.
Watch Van Dam's segment below, or by clicking this link.
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