TULSA, Okla. — The National Weather Service provides our weather team critical information so we can help keep Oklahoma safe.
With Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency laying off hundreds of employees at its parent agency on Feb. 27, we had some questions.
2 News Oklahoma’s Douglas Braff interviewed our chief meteorologist, Michael Seger, to learn how he relies on the NWS for his work every day
“We could not do what we do without the NWS,” said Seger. “It takes an entire team to do what we do.”
He spends most of his workday at the 2 News Weather Center sifting through data, all coming from the NWS and its parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
But it takes a village to collect all that data and get it to the public.
“All of us are in communication,” he explained. “You've got emergency managers, you've got first responders you've got storm chasers responders out there looking at storms that are reporting back to the weather service, which then we can report back.”
All that data is collected through different means as part of a widespread network and infrastructure and is made available to the public. Seger looks through the data, interprets it, before forecasting Green Country’s weather.
“Obviously, we have our role communicating to the public and we try to work with each other to get the message across as understandable as possible,” he said. “There's just so much that goes into this as far as public safety and public information.”
Seger acknowledged that getting this information to those who need it most could mean life or death.
With hundreds losing their jobs at NOAA and the NWS, he said there’s concern in the weather community.
We reached out to the NWS in Norman for an interview. An official there instead sent a statement:
“Per our long-standing practice, we do not discuss internal personnel and management matters. NOAA remains dedicated to its mission, providing timely information, research, and resources that serve the American public and ensure our nation’s environmental and economic resilience. We continue to provide weather information, forecasts and warnings pursuant to our public safety mission.”
Seger said, “There are concerns obviously about losing a fraction of this team that we have spent years building up what I think is the best in the world. I mean, there's nothing comparative across the world to what we have here in our country.”
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