‘There Will be Chaos!’ CNN Meteorologist Warns DOGE Cuts to National Weather Service Threaten Tornado Warnings

CNN anchor Dana Bash spoke to meteorologist and extreme-weather field reporter Derek Van Dam on Monday about recent DOGE cuts at the National Weather Service amid the backdrop of devastating storms over the weekend.

“At least 42 people are dead after severe storms swept across the U.S., predominantly in Missouri and Kansas. There were 80 tornado reports. This is Alabama, where most of the state was impacted, strewn metal you see there, splintered wood. You can’t even tell that it was a neighborhood. In Arkansas, two EF4 tornadoes hit something that hasn’t happened in nearly 30 years. It’s the first set of devastating storms to hit since the nation’s top weather and climate agency,” Bash began, adding:

NOAA was forced to cut more than one thousand people with more cuts expected at that agency. CNN’s Derek Van Dam is now joining us. Can you talk about the cuts to NOAA and how they potentially already impacted predicting the storms that we just talked about.

“Yeah, Dana, 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. Think about radar infrastructure. Think about balloon launches that feed weather and climate models. think about the satellites that monitor our weather from space,” Van Dam replied, adding:

We have every kind of economic impact that NOAA, the National Weather Service, uh, actually touches from, uh, agriculture to air transportation to commerce to tourism. Uh, it is all dependent on the weather. And if we start cutting back and rolling back this personnel, there will be chaos.

Uh, and, and the butterfly effects down the road are, are yet to be determined. Really, just take this past weekend, the severe weather outbreak that you’re looking at on your screen. 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. Just listen to what this fired NOAA employee had to say about this.

CNN then played a clip from an earlier interview with a fired NOAA worker who said, “NOAA and the National Weather Service are the only people who issue tornado watches and tornado warnings, so if you reduce the capacity of the Weather Service to be able to do that, you’re going to cause there to be issues when it comes to safety.”

Van Dam added, “Remember, NOAA warned about the severe weather outbreak this past weekend, well, a week in advance. Now the National Weather Service, the arm of NOAA actually fine-tuned the weather forecast and then issued the actual warnings on the day of the event. So they work in tandem together and cutting personnel potentially could put public safety at risk. Dana.”

Bash concluded, “Thank you so much. This is such an important story. We all have reported on the cuts and now we are watching to see, particularly in areas that are so important to people’s lives and security, how they’re having an effect. Thanks, Derek.”

Watch the clip above via CNN.