After a series of powerful tornadoes swept through the Midwest on Friday night into Saturday morning, killing at least 34, many are voicing new concerns about DOGE cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which issues warnings about dangerous storms.
NOAA, which contains the National Weather Service, recently faced mass layoffs amounting to about 10% of its workforce as DOGE looks for areas of the federal government to make cuts, hoping to slash the size of the government and reduce spending.
That accounts for about 1,029 employees of the currently 10,290 that work for the agency, three former senior NOAA officials told The Associated Press. Many who were fired included probationary staff, some of whom do crucial local forecasts with the NWS across the country.
NOAA is responsible not only for publishing daily weather forecasts but also for monitoring and warning the nation about hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, tsunamis and space weather that could impact the electrical grid in some areas. It also manages the country's fisheries, runs its marine sanctuaries and provides navigation information to ships and, as its name implies, monitors changes in the climate and the ocean.
It's one of the U.S.'s most crucial government agencies, and it keeps hundreds of millions of Americans safe every day with its forecasts and extreme weather warnings. Some facets of the organization help areas battered by extreme weather respond to disasters, including tornadoes and other, larger-scale events like oil spills.
But on Friday night into Saturday, tornadoes ravaged areas of the Mississippi Valley and Deep South as other extreme weather rattled other parts of the country, killing at least 34 people total as countless homes were utterly destroyed.
Some were killed in their homes as they slept, with tornadoes ripping through properties, completely uprooting them as debris was sent flying for miles across Missouri, Arkansas and other parts of the Midwest and South.
In the Great Plains, winds triggered dust storms that ultimately fanned over 100 wildfires. Harrowing videos posted to social media show the fires ripping through entire communities, utterly decimating them.
Over 100 million people were under alert for severe weather, with a forecast predicting winds of up to 80 mph from Canada to Texas, with blizzards expected in the north as wildfire risk threatened the warmer, drier areas to the south.
Car crashes were also a significant cause of death from the storms, with three killed on Friday in Amarillo, Texas, which is located in the state's Panhandle. One pileup contained an estimated 38 cars, according to Sgt. Cindy Barkley of the state's Department of Public Safety.
"It’s the worst I’ve ever seen," Barkley said, calling the near-zero visibility a nightmare. "We couldn’t tell that they were all together until the dust kind of settled."
Cave City, Arkansas, was placed under a state of emergency until further notice, Mayor Jonas Anderson said on social media early Saturday, after five people were injured there. The entire community was ripped apart by tornadoes.
"Electricity infrastructure has been decimated and will remain off for an unknown period of time," he said. Evacuation orders were widespread across several states.
Social media fears about DOGE cuts to NOAA
Many concerned Americans flocked to social media to criticize the recent DOGE cuts to NOAA after the storms wreaked havoc across the U.S. over the weekend.
X user Chrissi Nielsen (@NielsenChrissi), whose profile says she's based in Los Angeles, wrote, "Tonight is an example of why we need the National Weather Service and all their meteorologists They are out there tonight saving lives during tornado outbreak and they are doing it with less Commendable job NWS. #ARwx #MOwx #tornado."
Under that tweet, Kenzie Butcher (@KenzButcher), who lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, wrote that she spent five hours attempting to count the number of tornado warnings and extensions in her area but lost count after 150.
"It’s terrifying to think of the NWS losing funding," she wrote. "I tried to count the number of tornado warnings and extensions from the NWS account tonight. I lost count at 150 in the past 5 hours alone. As an Arkansan, every person I know here has been under a tornado warning tonight."
The Lincoln Project, which describes itself on its website as "a leading pro-democracy organization in the United States — dedicated to the preservation, protection, and defense of democracy," created a thread with resources for communities impacted by the storms.
It claimed on its own X page that cuts could mean "fewer resources" to keep people safe.
Ryan Hall (@ryanhallyall), a weatherman, wrote on his own X page ahead of the deadly storms: "Every new piece of data that comes in only confirms our suspicions of a major tornado outbreak today & tomorrow. This is going to be bad, folks..."
