Alabama’s celebrity weatherman pleads for the National Weather Service

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This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here. 

By Dennis Pillion, Inside Climate News

BIRMINGHAM, Ala.—At around 11 p.m. Saturday night, James Spann was winding down his ninth hour of live news coverage of a deadly storm system that spawned 16 suspected tornadoes across central Alabama.

The National Weather Service in Birmingham has confirmed at least nine tornadoes touched down in central Alabama, with damage surveys still underway. The weekend storms killed three in Alabama, and at least 40 nationwide. 

Through it all, Spann, 68, held his post on the air in his traditional white dress shirt, tie and suspenders, as he has throughout nearly every major storm event in central Alabama for the last 47 years. 

A fair number of adults living in the Birmingham area have watched Spann their entire lives. Many saw him in person at countless elementary school visits he’s conducted across the region since at least the early 1990s.

He’s become the face of Alabama’s weather safety operations and has also made himself into possibly the most famous local weatherman in America, with 1.3 million Facebook followers, plus another 300,000 on Instagram and 565,000 on X.

Now, with the life-saving Weather Service in the crosshairs of President Donald Trump and chainsaw-wielding billionaire Elon Musk, weather forecasters like Spann are speaking out to defend the agency that provides the backbone for their work.

“I think they need a publicist, because people just don’t understand,” Spann told Inside Climate News in an interview conducted before the weekend’s severe weather events. 

On April 27, 2011, when a widespread outbreak of deadly tornadoes ravaged the state, Spann was reportedly on the air for more than 10 hours straight for central Alabama’s ABC affiliate as 62 confirmed tornadoes touched the ground, killing 252 people.

The death toll for the tornadoes this week and in 2011 likely would have been higher if not for warnings provided by the National Weather Service and broadcast by Spann and others. 

“People say, ‘Well, if they shut it down, I’ll just use my app,’” Spann said of the possible Trump cuts. “Well, where do you think the information on your app comes from? It comes from computer model output that’s run by the National Weather Service. 

“And then they say, ‘Well, we rely on James Spann.’ Well, James Spann is using the same computer models.”

In addition to the global computer forecast model forecasts, Spann said the Weather Service provides local model output that is invaluable for local forecasts. 

“Those are extremely helpful when you’re approaching a tornado threat, a snow storm, winter storm, flood, hurricane,” he said. “And if those models are degraded in any way, that will really hurt, and that’s just a small part of what they provide.”

The NWS also operates weather satellites, runs radar stations around the country and launches weather balloons that provide the data for those models. 

“If you ever watch us when there are tornadoes flying, you’re going to see a whole lot of radar,” he said. “Where do you think that comes from? The National Weather Service. 

“And even as it is now, we’ve got some really severe radar gaps in the state. And this is nothing new, this has been going on for a while. We’ve got some spots in west Alabama where the radar beam is 10,000 feet off the ground, which means we can’t see what’s going on down near the surface. So if any radars are decommissioned or taken away, that’s a real problem.”

Outlook Hazy on Weather Service Cuts

Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, headed by Musk, has reportedly already fired hundreds of people working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the NWS, and DOGE may not be done yet. 

The Associated Press reported last week that NOAA, at DOGE’s behest, is preparing to cut another 1,000 jobs, an additional 10 percent reduction in its workforce.  

A NOAA spokesperson declined to provide details on how many people had been let go, or where those cuts had taken place. 

“Per long-standing practice, we are not discussing internal personnel and management matters,” NOAA spokesperson Susan Buchanan said via email. 

“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 National Weather Service Employees Organization, a union representing NWS employees, said it was still trying to determine the extent of the cuts, but that at least 100 probationary NWS employees had been fired and more than 200 had taken a deferred resignation plan offered by DOGE. 

“300 employees may not sound like much but when combined with regular planned retirements, this attrition is a major impact all at once,” Tom Fahy, the union’s legislative director, said via email. 

Fahy said that while the union was still assessing the situation, “we do know that staffing cuts are impacting almost every NWS Weather Forecast Office across the country. Alabama will also feel staff shortages.”

In a press call, U.S. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said that 650 NOAA employees had already been fired by Trump and Musk “with no rhyme or reason, with no clue or concern how it will seriously harm our economy and our communities.”

On the same call, former NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said the cuts ordered by Trump and Musk were “misguided, ill-informed, often illegal, and just plain stupid.”

“This administration has chosen to basically enter the room, turn out the light and start shooting,” Spinrad said. “For no reason beyond the theater that it will produce.”

In addition to personnel cuts, the DOGE website lists 19 NWS facilities among those in which they plan to terminate the lease, including the national Radar Operations Center in Norman, Oklahoma, which maintains and updates the country’s Doppler radar network. 

Spann said the uncertainty itself is hurting the NWS, with employees not knowing their fate. 

“It’s not a good atmosphere when you’ve got critical work that you have to do, not knowing if you’re going to have a job the next day or next week or next month,” he said. 

A Weather Celebrity Speaks Out

Spann, perhaps the most famous non-football coach in Alabama, is routinely listed as one of the state’s top social media personalities, and one of the most followed weather forecasters in the country. 

He often posts dozens of times per day, sharing weather forecasts, announcements from local first responders, severe weather information, reflections on past weather events, or simply reposting his fans’ vacation photos. He hosts a weekly podcast called Weather Brains and has written two books: “Weathering Life,” a memoir, and “All You Can Do Is Pray,” recounting his experiences in the 2011 tornado outbreak. 

His encyclopedic knowledge of Alabama’s backroads, towns, churches and barbecue restaurants is the stuff of legend, and inspired at least one comedy parody video, which he starred in. 

Before his afternoon and evening broadcasts, but after his morning blog posts and daily forecasts, he regularly ventures out to elementary schools throughout the state speaking about weather. 

“Third graders deeply understand me,” Spann said. “They understand sarcasm, they think you’re funny, they’re sweet, don’t smell bad yet. The third grade, that’s the perfect grade.”

He built his following, mostly, by avoiding hot-button political topics that might divide his audience. That includes climate change, or at least it does now. 

Spann was criticized in 2007 for rejecting the scientific consensus that climate change is primarily driven by human activity, specifically burning fossil fuels. He made an appearance on Glenn Beck’s CNN show in response to those criticisms, in which he said human carbon emissions were “like a pop gun compared to atomic bomb issues like volcanic dust in the stratosphere, the position of the sun, the temperature of the sun, the structure of the Earth’s magnetic poles.”

Numerous studies have shown that fossil fuels contribute far more carbon emissions to the atmosphere than volcanoes. A NASA analysis, among other sources, shows that the average global temperature has continued to increase since 1980, even as solar irradiation—energy from the sun reaching Earth—has decreased. 

In 2010, Spann signed the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation’s “Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming,” which states, “We deny that carbon dioxide—essential to all plant growth—is a pollutant. Reducing greenhouse gases cannot achieve significant reductions in future global temperatures, and the costs of the policies would far exceed the benefits.”

Since then, Spann has mostly refrained from talking about climate change in public, calling it a “no-win situation.”

“My job in life is mitigating loss of life when there are tornadoes flying around here,” Spann told Inside Climate News. “Because if you come out and start talking climate, then you lose half the population, whether it’s right wing or left wing.

“So I leave that to climatologists.”

But in this situation, he’s willing to speak up for the National Weather Service. 

“Many high-level politicians follow this page, both Democrats and Republicans,” Spann said in a Feb. 25 Facebook post. “I would encourage them and all of you to support my colleagues at the National Weather Service during this time. Their service is absolutely invaluable.”

Spann told Inside Climate News that he saw the post as a way to advocate for NWS workers who can’t publicly advocate for themselves. 

“I think one of the things we can do to help them is kind of tell their story,” Spann said. “I don’t have any interest in politics. I don’t like to dabble in it, but I just thought it was important to write a support piece for these guys, because they don’t have a voice.”