The National Weather Service and its parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, were heavily targeted by the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency in February. Hundreds of employees were laid off, including an estimated 30 to 40 percent of weather service staff in Oregon.
Despite the cuts, the weather service's Medford office says it is still prepared to provide support for wildfire season across southern Oregon and northern California.
The Medford office tracked 1,345 cloud-to-ground lightning strikes on Monday, July 7, with the majority striking Jackson County.
“Each of those lightning strikes could potentially become a new fire,” said Brad Schaaf, a warning coordination meteorologist. “Our firefighters are great, but that’s a lot of lightning strikes to cover.”
Schaaf said the number of strikes was unusual for the region.
“This set of storms really kind of reminded me of something that I would see when I was living in Florida, with a lot of cloud-to-ground strikes,” he said. "That is always a danger to people.”
The Oregon Department of Forestry Southwest District has responded to more than 70 fires in Jackson and Josephine Counties sparked by the electrical storm.
The Medford office plays a critical role in helping agencies anticipate and respond to wildfires, Schaaf said, from issuing red flag warnings to deploying specially trained incident meteorologists.
These meteorologists provide on-site forecasts to help crews understand how weather may affect fire behavior. The Medford office currently has one incident meteorologist and two more in training.
The Medford office plans to deploy an incident meteorologist by July 10 to assist with multiple small fires burning in Jackson and Josephine counties.
