By SETH BORENSTEIN, Associated Press Science Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — As nasty tornadoes popped up from Kansas to Kentucky, a depleted National Weather Service was in scramble mode.

The agency’s office in Jackson, Kentucky, had begun closing nightly as deep cuts by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency began hitting. But the weather service kept staffers on overtime Friday night to stay on top of the deadly storms, which killed nearly 20 people in the Jackson office’s forecast area.

It’s a scenario likely to be repeated as the U.S. is on track to see more tornadoes this year than in 2024, which was the second-busiest tornado year on record. Forecasters said there was at least a 10% risk of tornadoes Tuesday for 10.6 million people in parts of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Weather service veterans expressed concern about the agency’s ability to keep up in the face of the cuts.

Anthony Broughton stands amid his destroyed home following severe weather in the Sunshine Hill neighborhood of London, Ky., Saturday, May 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley)

Rich Thompson, lead operations forecaster at the NWS Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, said the job is getting done. But he acknowledged that staffing cuts have “made it harder on us.”

“It has made it hard on the local offices just to make sure that we have all of our important duties covered. But, I mean, most of the people take those important duties seriously, so we’re going to do what it takes to cover it,” Thompson said. “I hope we’re not in the same staffing situation long term. … It would be hard to sustain this for months or years.”

NWS spokesperson Erica Grow Cei said the Jackson office “remained fully staffed through the duration of the event using surge staffing” and had support from neighboring offices.

A leaner weather service is seeing more extreme weather

The Storm Prediction Center had tallied 883 local tornado reports this year as of Monday, which was 35% higher than average for this time of year.

Many former weather service employees, especially those fired by the Trump administration, remain connected to the agency’s inner workings. They describe an agency that’s somehow getting forecasts and warnings out in time, but is also near the breaking point.

“They’ll continue to answer the bell as long as they can, but you can only ask people to work 80 hours or 120 hours a week, you know for so long,” said Elbert “Joe” Friday, a former weather service director. “They may be so bleary-eyed, they can’t identify what’s going on on the radar.”

FILE – An American flag is posted near destroyed homes after a tornado passed through the area on May 17, 2025, in London, Ky. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

Tom DiLiberto, a weather service meteorologist and spokesman who was fired in earlier rounds of the job cuts, said the situation is like a boat with leaks “and you have a certain amount of pieces of duct tape and you keep moving duct tape to different holes. At some point, you can’t.”

As of March, some of the weather service offices issuing tornado warnings Friday and Sunday were above the 20% vacancy levels that outside experts have said is a critical threshold. Those include Jackson, with a 25% vacancy rate, Louisville, Kentucky, with a 29% vacancy rate, and Wichita, Kansas, with a 32% vacancy rate, according to data compiled by weather service employees and obtained by the AP.

Technologies used to predict tornadoes have significantly improved, but radar can’t replace a well-rested staff that has to figure out how nasty or long-lasting storms will be and how to get information to the public, said Karen Kosiba, managing director of the Flexible Array of Mesonets and Radars (FARM) facility, a network of weather equipment used for research.

“There really are not enough people to handle everything,” said University of Oklahoma meteorology professor Howard Bluestein, who chased six tornadoes Sunday. “If the station is understaffed, that could affect the quality of forecasts.”

Cuts hit in different ways

Former weather service Director Louis Uccellini said budget cuts have drastically reduced the number of weather balloon launches, which provide critical information for forecasts. And weather service workers aren’t being allowed to travel to help train local disaster officials for what to do when they get dangerous weather warnings, he said.

Though the number of tornadoes is nearly at a record pace, Thompson and other experts said the tornado outbreak of the last few days is mostly normal for this time of year.

For tornadoes to form, the atmosphere needs a collision of warm moist air from the Gulf of Mexico and storm systems chugging through via the jet stream, the river of air that brings weather fronts from west to east, said Thompson, Bluestein and Harold Brooks of the weather service’s National Severe Storm Laboratory.

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“The moisture that we’re getting from the Gulf of Mexico is a lot more than we used to get,” said Bluestein. “That makes the likelihood that we’re getting a stronger storm higher and that’s pretty unusual.”

Temperatures in the Gulf are a couple of degrees warmer than usual for this time of year, according to the weather service.

The connection between climate change and tornadoes is not as well understood as the links between other types of extreme weather such as heavy rainfall and heat waves, experts say.

“Under the climate change scenario, we’re kind of supercharging the atmosphere on some days and then actually reducing the favorability on others,” said Ohio State University atmospheric sciences professor Jana Houser.

Scientists are also seeing more tornadoes in January, February, March and other times when it used to be too cold for twisters to form, especially in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee, she said.

More people are also living in harm’s way, Brooks said. That’s why Uccellini and others see increasing risks to people and property.

“When you have this kind of threat and you’re understaffed at some point, something’s going to slip through the cracks,” Uccellini said. “I can’t tell you when it’s going to happen.”

Associated Press reporter Isabella O’Malley contributed from Philadelphia.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

By JACK BROOK, Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Authorities have arrested a 33-year-old Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office maintenance worker in connection with the escape of 10 jail inmates, the Louisiana Attorney General’s office said Tuesday.

Sterling Williams admitted to law enforcement that one of the escapees “advised him to turn the water off in the cell” before the men slipped away through a hole behind a toilet, the Attorney General’s office said in a statement.

“Instead of reporting the inmate, Williams turned the water off as directed allowing the inmates to carry out their scheme to successfully escape,” it said.

Williams is charged with 10 counts of principle to simple escape and malfeasance in office.

Sheriff Susan Hutson has said she believes the jail break was an inside job and last week told reporters her agency had suspended three employees pending an investigation.

“It’s almost impossible, not completely, but almost impossible for anybody to get out of this facility without help,” she said of the Orleans Justice Center, a correctional facility where 1,400 people are being held.

The inmates escaped early Friday while the lone guard watching them went to get food.

At least one of the steel bars protecting plumbing fixtures “appeared to have been intentionally cut using a tool,” the sheriff’s office stated.

The inmates quickly shed their uniforms and changed into regular clothes.

The absence of the inmates, many charged with or convicted of violent offenses such as murder, was not reported for hours. Four have since been apprehended and six remain at large.

Since the escape, Hutson has pointed to long-standing deficiencies such as faulty locks and staffing shortages. But a growing number of state and local officials have said blame for the escape rests squarely on her for failing her responsibility to keep inmates locked up.

The New Orleans City Council is scheduled to discuss the jail break with the sheriff’s office and other authorities Tuesday.

Authorities in St. Croix County, Wis., are investigating the deaths of a man and a woman who were found Monday night during a welfare check.

Deputies were called to a house in Hersey, an unincorporated community in the town of Springfield, around 9 p.m. According to a press release from the St. Croix County Sheriff’s Office, the woman’s family hadn’t been able to get a hold of her and were concerned.

When deputies arrived, they found the bodies of both the woman and the man, as well as a gun.

Family members told investigators that the man and woman knew each other, but details of their exact relationship weren’t provided. Names were not immediately released.

“At this time, it does not appear there is an ongoing threat to the community,” the release states. “This is an active and ongoing investigation.”

The Wisconsin State Patrol and the St. Croix County Medical Examiner’s Office are assisting with the investigation.

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By MATTHEW PERRONE and LAURAN NEERGAARD, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Annual COVID-19 shots for healthy younger adults and children will no longer be routinely approved under a major new policy shift unveiled Tuesday by the Trump administration.

Top officials for the Food and Drug Administration laid out new requirements for yearly updates to COVID shots, saying they’d continue to use a streamlined approach that would make vaccines available to adults 65 and older as well as children and younger adults with at least one health problem that puts them at higher risk.

But the FDA framework urges companies conduct large, lengthy studies before tweaked vaccines can be approved for healthier people. In a framework published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, agency officials said the approach still could keep annual vaccinations available for between 100 million and 200 million adults.

FILE – A vial of Moderna COVID-19 vaccine rests on a table at an inoculation station in Jackson, Miss., on July 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File)

The upcoming changes raise questions about people who may still want a fall COVID-19 shot but don’t clearly fall into one of the categories.

“Is the pharmacist going to determine if you’re in a high-risk group?” asked Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “The only thing that can come of this will make vaccines less insurable and less available.”

The framework, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, is the culmination of a series of recent steps scrutinizing the use of COVID shots and raising major questions about the broader availability of vaccines under President Donald Trump.

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For years, federal health officials have told most Americans to expect annual updates to COVID-19 vaccines, similar to the annual flu shot. Just like with flu vaccines, until now the FDA has approved updated COVID shots when manufacturers provide evidence that they spark just as much immune protection as the previous year’s version.

But FDA’s new guidance appears to be the end of that approach under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, who has filled the FDA and other health agencies with outspoken critics of the government’s handling of COVID shots, particularly their recommendation for young, healthy adults and children.

Tuesday’s update, written by FDA Commissioner Marty Makary and FDA vaccine chief Vinay Prasad, criticized the U.S.’s “one-size-fits-all” approach and states that the U.S. has been “the most aggressive” in recommending COVID boosters, when compared with European countries.

“We simply don’t know whether a healthy 52-year-old woman with a normal BMI who has had Covid-19 three times and has received six previous doses of a Covid-19 vaccine will benefit from the seventh dose,” they wrote.

Outside experts say there are legitimate questions about how much everyone still benefits from yearly COVID vaccination or whether they should be recommended for people at increased risk. An influential panel of advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is set to debate that question next month.

The FDA framework announced Tuesday appears to usurp that advisory panel’s job, Offit said. He added that CDC studies have made clear that booster doses do offer protection against mild to moderate illness for four to six months after the shot even in healthy people.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.