The National Weather Service isn’t providing details about how staffing shortages will affect its Maine operations, but staff meteorologists said the interruption of weather balloon launches at one of its two local stations will undermine the accuracy of the agency’s weather models and forecasts.

“In general, the more data we feed into our supercomputer, the more accurate our weather models and forecasts are,” said Donald Dumont, the warning coordination meteorologist at the weather service office in Gray, one of three NWS stations that will no longer launch twice-daily weather balloons.

The National Weather Service is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an arm of the U.S. Department of Commerce that is under fire from the new Trump administration because of its climate science work. Under Trump, NOAA is facing a 20% cut of its 13,000-person workforce.

Stephen Baron, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Gray, emerges from a garage bay with a hydrogen-filled weather balloon in September 2023. Before the launches were suspended Friday, the Gray office typically launched two weather balloons every day to track patterns and released four per day during extreme weather events like hurricanes. Ben McCanna/Portland Press Herald

Budget cuts are now threatening some of the twice-daily weather balloon launches, which remain the National Weather Service’s best method of measuring temperature, humidity, air pressure, wind direction and wind speed in the upper atmosphere even 90 years after they were first put into service.

The station still released both balloons Tuesday, but Mike Hopkins, the head of the National Weather Service’s surface and upper air division, said Friday that some stations, including Gray, may suspend regular balloon releases due to a lack of staffing.

The staffing shortages in Gray are likely the result of NWS employees opting for early retirement and agency-wide layoffs of probationary employees, said a spokesperson for Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who is the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

In an email Tuesday night, the office spokesperson said: “Senator Collins is continuing to work with the Department of Commerce to ensure that critical programs that protect lives and livelihoods across the state, from weather forecasting to fisheries management, are sufficiently funded and staffed.”

The balloons carry an instrument pack that documents temperature and humidity up to about 100,000 feet in the atmosphere before the balloons pop and the pack falls back to earth. The pack sends data in one-second intervals to the station where a computer calculates air pressure, wind and wind gusts.

It takes about two hours to complete each balloon launch, even with all the automation. An observer or meteorologist must start the computer software program and instrument pack, walk up to the inflation building and fill up the balloon with helium or hydrogen, attach the pack and a parachute, then release it.

For years, Gray has been part of a national network of 92 stations and a global system of a thousand to launch weather balloons twice a day, every day. Gray itself covers western Maine, New Hampshire and northern Vermont, but that data is needed to provide a robust global forecast.

The weather balloon network is the backbone of a healthy global weather model and forecast, said Lou McNally, a veteran broadcast meteorologist and meteorology professor. As the chief forecaster for the Bermuda Weather Service, he can recall only one day in four years when they failed to launch balloons.

“Without it, the whole system goes down the tubes,” McNally said. “Imagine ripping a couple pages out of a novel. That’s what happens when you eliminate weather balloons from the network. It creates gaps in the story. And you never know what kind of storm is going to slip through those cracks.”

For example, Canada’s weather balloon network is more spread out than ours, with greater distances between release sites. With less data, the Canadian network has misread incoming severe weather as a normal winter snowstorm. Our dense network would quickly identify that same storm as a nor’easter.

Gray isn’t the only U.S. station that no longer has enough staff to launch its twice-daily balloons. Albany and western Alaska are also halting some launches, according to NWS. In Alaska, a private company has offered to use its weather balloons to fill in the data gap for the next six months.

Dumont, the weather service meteorologist in Gray, wouldn’t discuss current staffing levels at the office. In the past, the Gray office has staffed at least two meteorologists on each of its three shifts. It employed a total of 15 meteorologists as recently as two years ago. The total has declined under the new administration, but Dumont wouldn’t say by how many.

Dumont said the office will staff shifts to assure it can fulfill its “critical mission functions” of providing “weather, water and climate data, forecasts, warnings and impact-based decision support services for the protection of life and property, and enhancement of the national economy.”

The staffing shortage doesn’t mean an end to all weather balloon launches, Dumont said. During severe weather days, Dumont said NWS will still make it an “operational priority” to get all the data needed to issue warnings and save lives.

Gov. Janet Mills is concerned about the local repercussions of layoffs and spending cuts across federal government, including the freezing of federal grants to the Maine nonprofits, the University of Maine, and the state itself, even though federal judges have ordered those grants to be released.

“If the president does something that will benefit Maine, she will support it, and if he does something that does not benefit Maine, she will oppose it,” spokesman Ben Goodman said in a written statement Monday about a range of proposed cuts and tariffs.

Goodman continued: “She is concerned about unforeseen impacts from cutbacks at the National Weather Service, as Maine people, our emergency response agencies, and particularly our farmers, foresters and fishermen, depend upon the detailed and accurate weather forecasting it provides.”

A spokesperson for Rep. Jared Golden, who serves the 2nd District, said his office is “aware of staff departures” at the weather service but does not have precise figures on how many have left or details as to why.

“Congressman Golden supports the mission of NWS,” spokesperson Mario Moretto said in a written statement. “Obviously, accurate weather forecasting is critical for a state like Maine, not just for families going about their daily lives but for our economy.”