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LEADVILLE, Colo. (AP) — Officials in the Western U.S. who warn the public about avalanches are sounding a different type of alarm. They say they're worried that the Trump administration firing hundreds of meteorologists and other environmental scientists could hinder life-saving forecasts that skiers and mountain drivers rely on.
The forecasting work is crucial for skiers and climbers who flirt with danger when they travel through mountain gullies that are prone to slide. Recovery efforts for three victims of a large avalanche near Anchorage, Alaska, were ongoing Thursday, two days after the accident in mountains where forecasters had warned it would be “easy” to trigger a slide that day because of a weak layer in the deep snow.
The forecasts also are used to protect the general public. Transportation officials use them to gauge the risk on well-traveled roads like one in Colorado where a vehicle got pushed off the highway by a slide earlier this month.
“We save lives and there are people alive today because of the work we do," said Doug Chabot, who directed the Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center in Montana for almost 24 years. "To take funding and to just randomly cut programs, it will affect our ability to save lives.”
‘There's a lot of pieces that will fall apart'
Avalanches kill about two dozen people annually in the U.S. Predicting their likelihood, potential severity and location depends heavily on information provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The information comes in two forms: data-driven models and conversations between avalanche forecasters and National Weather Service meteorologists who can help assess the data.
“We have our own numerical model, but we can’t run that without the work that NOAA is doing,” said Ethan Greene, director of the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, which publishes avalanche forecasts. “Without that work, there’s a lot of pieces that will fall apart.”
So far this winter 18 people had been killed by avalanches, most of them in remote areas in Western states.
Weather models from NOAA are used by 14 avalanche centers run by the U.S. Forest Service. The Colorado center is largely state funded. Chabot said employees at the federal avalanche centers have so far been exempt from cuts, but officials worry that could change.
Shrinking the federal workforce
The Trump administration has not disclosed what positions are being lost at NOAA. Former leaders of the agency have said the firings will have wide-ranging negative impacts on flight safety, shipping safety and warning networks for tornados and hurricanes.
NOAA has about 13,000 employees. The firings come as billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency shrink a federal workforce that President Donald Trump has called bloated and sloppy.
A NOAA spokesperson declined to answer questions from The Associated Press about the potential for the cuts to degrade avalanche forecasting quality.
“We are not discussing internal personnel and management matters,” spokesperson Susan Buchanan wrote in an email. “We continue to provide weather information, forecasts and warnings pursuant to our public safety mission.”
Greene and Chabot said they don’t anticipate immediate effects. But if NOAA's data is weaker, Greene said his center's forecasts will be more uncertain.
“We will probably look at the same things that we’re looking at and see that they’re not working as well as they were,” he said.
Dangerous layers of snow
On a mountainside near Leadville, Colorado, this week, Greene dug a pit into the snow and scooped out snow crystals that he scattered across a plastic blue card.
“It's so beautiful,” he said, referring to a layer of snow turned to ice crystals, which under certain conditions can create weak layers prone to avalanche.
Such surveys are an essential part of forecasting and so is data on weather, which impacts snow and helps drive avalanche risk.
In nearby Frisco, Colorado, light snow fell in the parking lot at the Mayflower Gulch trailhead, where college students Joseph Burgoyne and his friend Michael Otenbaker from Michigan donned snow shoes and strapped skis to a backpack before heading up a mountain trail. Burgoyne said it’s scary to see headlines on social media sites about skiers who were “carried and buried” by avalanches
“It’s serious terrain, and those reports, they can save lives," Burgyone said of the avalanche forecasts. "Everybody just wants to have a good time. Going fast is fun. Finding deep snow is fun, but there’s serious dangers behind that.”
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Brown reported from Billings, Montana.
