WASHINGTON >> The federal weather and oceans agency touches people’s daily lives in unnoticed ways, so massive firings there will likely cause needless deaths and a big hit to America’s economy, according to the people who ran it.

The first round of firings started Thursday at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a government agency that monitors the oceans, the atmosphere where storms roam and space, and puts out hundreds of “products” daily. Those products generally save lives and money, experts say.

NOAA’s 301 billion weather forecasts every year reach 96% of American households.

The firings are “going to affect safety of flight, safety of shipping, safety of everyday Americans,” Admiral Tim Gallaudet told the Associated Press Friday. President Donald Trump appointed Gallaudet as acting NOAA chief during his last administration. “Lives are at risk for sure.”

Former NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad agreed.

“We’re getting into prime tornado time. We’re getting into planting season for the agricultural season for the bread belt,” Spinrad said. “It’s going to affect safety. It’s going to affect the economy.”

That’s because “NOAA sort of gets forgotten, until it’s very important,” said private meteorologist Ryan Maue, a conservative and a NOAA chief scientist under Trump.

“This throws sand in the gears” of an agency that is understaffed but doing “a Herculean job,” Maue said.Elon Musk has repeatedly defended federal workforce cuts by his Department of Government Efficiency as “common sense.”

What does NOAA do?

The agency creates daily weather forecasts from 122 local offices, issuing warnings for deadly tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, wildfires and floods.

Disaster and local officials use those to advise the public on how to avoid danger. Farmers use seasonal outlooks for crop advice. Pilots use aviation forecasts. Forecasts from private weather apps on phones, on television and elsewhere are based on NOAA satellites, data and forecasts.

“That’s an amazing undertaking to monitor that. You can’t count on TV meteorologists to fill this gap and you can’t count on private meteorology,” Maue said.

What’s the potential impact?

In the west, dozens of NOAA meteorologists provide firefighting crews with up-to-the-minute forecasts on wind and other shifting conditions that affect fires and could mean life or death, said Elbert “Joe” Friday, a former director of NOAA’s National Weather Service. They also are key in avalanche warnings.

In the water, ships use the agency’s weather forecasts and mapping of water channels for safety, while NOAA manages fisheries worth hundreds of billions of dollars and stunning ocean sanctuaries.

Gallaudet, who was a Navy rear admiral, said NOAA guidance on weather and shipping channels will be so hurt by the firings that America could see more accidents like when a massive container ship ran into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge in 2024.

It was NOAA’s quick work that enabled the reopening of Baltimore’s economically critical port after a only a couple months, Spinrad said.

NOAA provides the science expertise in the response to major oil spills in coastal areas, including 2010’s BP Deepwater Horizon, Spinrad said.

In space, NOAA forecasts help prevent satellites — including those belonging to Musk’s SpaceX — from colliding. The agency also watches for solar flares that can knock out parts of the electrical grid and hurt air traffic communications, officials said. NOAA owns or operates 18 satellites in orbit.

“Three years ago, SpaceX lost 40 satellites due to their ignorance of space weather implications and upper atmosphere density impacts. They immediately came to NOAA and said, ‘hey, help us out’,” Spinrad said, calling it “an object lesson there for Elon Musk himself” on the agency’s value.

The National Weather Service is worth $102 billion a year to the U.S. economy, according to a 2022 study by the American Meteorological Society and economist Jeffrey Lazo. Before the current Trump administration, NOAA had a $6.7 billion budget, including nearly $1.4 billion for the National Weather Service, one of six sub-agencies.

How many are gone?

NOAA officials would not reveal how many people were fired Thursday or are being let go, citing privacy.

About 500 employees left the agency Friday after taking the so-called deferred resignation offer, according to three people familiar with the situation. Under that program, staff at NOAA and other agencies have been told that they can stop working now and be paid through September.

Those deferred-resignation departures are in addition to the more than 800 probationary staff who were fired Thursday. The two rounds of departures together represent about 10% of NOAA’s roughly 13,000 employees.

Project 2025

Project 2025, the policy blueprint published by the Heritage Foundation that is reflected in many of the actions taken by the administration so far, calls the agency “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.” The document urges that NOAA be dismantled and some of its programs terminated.

This report includes information from the New York Times.