Picturesque river valleys, open plains and stunning coastlines can be great places to call home, but they can also come with risks. That makes severe weather alerts from the National Weather Service and government disaster resiliency and recovery programs important to protect you and help communities prepare and recover.
Public servants working for you
Venkatachalam “Ram” Ramaswamy, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Developed a state-of-the-art computer model that simulates Earth’s climate to provide earlier and more accurate forecasts of severe weather events like heatwaves, winter storms and hurricanes. This helps save lives and property by giving governments and people the time to prepare.
Between January 2025 and February 2026, over 5,000 employees departed the Federal Emergency Management Agency. This represents about 20% of the previous workforce, making it more difficult for the agency to respond to emerging disasters.
The number of meteorologists employed by the government in agencies like National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration decreased by 10% between September 2024 and February 2026. Eighty percent of those meteorologists were retiring, likely indicating that decades of experience were lost through those departures.
After a “manual review” of all FEMA grants was imposed, more than $100 billion that FEMA owed beneficiaries across the country was frozen, leaving communities that have faced natural disasters without timely resources for rebuilding.
New York Times