Hundreds of federal employees working for the National Weather Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were among the latest to be cut by the Trump administration on Thursday.

The employees ranged from local meteorologists reporting daily weather to hurricane modeling experts.

It was unclear Friday if any employees working at the National Weather Service’s office in Ruskin were fired. Susan Buchanan, a spokesperson for the weather service, declined to comment on the cuts or the number of employees affected in the Tampa Bay area.

“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,” Buchanan said. “We continue to provide weather information, forecasts and warnings pursuant to our public safety mission.”

The firings come amid efforts by billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency to shrink a federal workforce that President Donald Trump has called bloated and sloppy. Thousands of probationary employees across the government have already been fired, according to The Associated Press.

The cuts come on the heels of one of the deadliest and costliest hurricane seasons in Tampa Bay’s recorded weather history.

Daniel Noah, a retired warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Ruskin, said he fears slashing federal meteorologists will affect Tampa Bay come hurricane season, which starts June 1.

“With the National Weather Service, we’ve always been short-staffed for what we do,” Noah said. “And to be any further short-staffed makes me nervous for this coming hurricane season.”

On Friday, Noah said he had not spoken with weather service staff and was unsure of any employee cuts. Noah retired in late 2023 after working for the weather service for 35 years.

He said morale was low when he last visited three weeks ago. Staff worried for their jobs and their futures, he said.

The weather service is staffed for “fair weather” and runs 24/7 on a rotating schedule. When a hurricane or severe weather is barreling toward Tampa Bay, employees work overtime, Noah said.

“Staffing for hurricanes — some of them we were in the office for three days and sleeping there and eating there, and those offices are not designed for that,” Noah said.

Noah retired after recent years of hyperactive hurricane seasons. Long, stressful days go beyond the lead-up to storms making landfall. The weather service spends months working on damage assessments and coordinating with emergency managers in the offseason.

“So people that work for the weather service, they’re not doing it for the money, they’re doing it for the passion,” Noah said.

In a statement to the Tampa Bay Times, Pasco County’s emergency management director, Andrew Fossa, said he understands that people might be concerned about weather service layoffs, but he said it is too early to speculate on the potential impact to operations during hurricane season.

He called the weather service’s expertise “invaluable.”

The mass layoffs from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — more than 600, according to the former agency head — include at least one high-profile meteorologist in Miami and another charged with integrating artificial intelligence into climate and weather predictions.

“Every office in NOAA was hit by these indiscriminate, misguided, ill-intentioned reforms,” said Rick Spinrad, former director of the agency under former President Joe Biden, in a news conference Friday afternoon.

Spinrad said the cuts, especially of researchers who collect data that feeds into storm models, could erode the quality of hurricane forecasts.

“It’s not clear the planes will be able to fly and the ships will be able to go to sea, certainly not at the tempo we saw before,” he said. “The quality of the forecast is likely to go down to some degree.”

On Thursday afternoon, some staffers posted on social media that they got “the email” and lost their jobs.

Andrew Hazelton, an assistant scientist with the Miami-based Hurricane Research Division, was among them.

“I don’t want to make any comments other than I am exploring legal options in a couple of avenues,” he posted on X.

Another weather researcher, Zach Lane, also posted on X that he lost his job helping NOAA perfect the use of AI and machine learning in climate and weather predictions.

“After nearly two weeks of overwhelming uncertainty, today it happened. I was fired from my dream of working at NOAA. I’m so sorry to everyone also affected,” he posted.

The cuts appeared to be happening in two rounds, one of 500 and one of 800, said Craig McLean, a former chief scientist with the administration who said he got the information from someone with firsthand knowledge, according to reporting from the Associated Press.

That’s about 10% of that agency’s workforce. The first round of cuts were probationary employees, McLean said.

The firings are likely to be subject to a legal review. A federal judge on Thursday blocked several mass firings of probationary employees at federal agencies because they were probably carried out illegally.

The mass exodus of weather forecasting employees shocked advocates and scientists across the globe, particularly those focused on the climate, environment and meteorology, the Los Angeles Times reported.

“Gutting NOAA will hamstring essential lifesaving programs that forecast storms, ensure ocean safety and prevent the extinction of whales and sea otters,” said Miyoko Sakashita, the oceans program director for the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental nonprofit that works to protect wildlife.

“I think most Americans want these kinds of vital government services protected, and we’ll do everything we can to defend them.”

Juan Declet-Barreto, a senior social scientist for climate vulnerability at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a member-supported group of scientists, called the move from the Trump administration reckless for both the safety of communities and the future of climate science.

“Decimating the nation’s core scientific enterprise, even as costly and deadly climate change impacts and extreme weather events worsen, flies in the face of logic, common sense and fiscal responsibility,” Declet-Barreto said.

The weather service is an agency focused on life and safety, said Noah, the retired Tampa meteorologist.

“My fear is, if we’re too short-staffed during an approaching hurricane, bad things could happen,” Noah said.

Information from The Associated Press, the Miami Herald and the Los Angeles Times supplements this report.