A Tornado Might Destroy Your Town. The Federal Government Might Never Show Up.

[justaprogressive]

The weather has been just horrific lately throughout the United States. Last week, Chicago and El Paso were hit with the worst dust storms they’ve seen since the literal Dust Bowl. Over the weekend, states across the Midwest and the South were slammed by at least 100 tornadoes, all followed by baseball-size hail and pummeling rainstorms. The onslaught continued well into Tuesday, damaging thousands of homes and buildings and parks across a trail of 11 states, from Indiana to Minnesota to Oklahoma to Alabama.

CNN Weather reports that 28 people in three states have died as a result. A nor’easter is now making its way over to the East Coast, with 50-mph gusts and inches of rainfall in store for New England. Over Memorial Day weekend, severe thunderstorms are once again projected to slam middle and southern states, stretching from Nebraska down to Texas and out to Florida.

And there may be little if any help arriving for the survivors, thanks to the Trump administration’s mass government layoffs.

On Tuesday, St. Louis’ mayor told multiple news outlets that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had provided no ground support following the city’s billion-dollar tornado disaster—despite direct requests from Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley and the state’s Republican governor. (A few FEMA teams belatedly showed up on Wednesday, although Missouri has not yet been approved for emergency services.) In Kentucky, the agency’s response was also delayed, and recovery further complicated by outages to Louisville’s NOAA Weather Radio transmitters—because they were undergoing much-needed upgrades while storms were still racking the area. The National Weather Service outpost in Jackson, already so understaffed that it no longer operates 24/7, was forced to call in all of its meteorologists overnight to monitor the situation and blast out severe-weather updates. In Kansas, the NWS outfit in Goodland cut its own operating hours just a couple of days before the tornadoes landed. Galveston, Texas, which lies in the storm path, may face extra peril thanks to its broken NOAA radio (which hasn’t been fixed since it got knocked out by a fire in March) and an NWS forecasting office with a 44 percent vacancy rate.

https://slate.com/technology/2025/05/extreme-weather-elon-musk-donald-trump-doge-cuts-fema-noaa.html

Oy!