The main highway between the Oregon Coast and much of the Willamette Valley was closed in both directions Friday evening after a crash.

Highway 18 was closed 9 miles east of Lincoln City on Friday afternoon, the Oregon Department of Transportation said.

There is no detour.

Officials did not give an estimate of when they expect the highway to reopen.

Bill Poehler covers Marion and Polk County for the Statesman Journal. Contact him at bpoehler@StatesmanJournal.com

• The cuts could lead to slower and less accurate forecast predictions.
• Experts warn the cuts could have severe consequences during extreme weather events.

The agency that issues warnings for floods, ice storms and wildfire danger in Oregon is short-staffed by at least 30% to 40% following a series of reductions, hiring freezes and buyouts as part of the Trump administration’s latest effort to shrink federal government.

The National Weather Service is down to roughly 60-70 employees, from a previous high of 100, in offices in Portland, Medford, Pendleton and Boise, Idaho, which forecasts for northeast Oregon.

Those who have lost jobs include meteorologists, hydrologists and technicians that maintain sensitive weather equipment.

The NWS plays a wide-ranging role in Oregon, influencing where wildland firefighters are positioned, when ships cross into the Columbia River and whether school is canceled.

In addition, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, which is based in Portland and measures snowpack and water supply across the Pacific Northwest, saw its staffing slashed 58% this month, from 12 to five employees.

Nationwide, hundreds and maybe thousands of workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees both agencies, lost their jobs on Thursday, according to multiple reports.

As with other agencies targeted for reduction, including the U.S. Forest Service, the firings specifically affected probationary employees, a categorization that applies to new hires or those moved or promoted into new positions.

National Weather Service cuts ‘really detrimental, and dangerous’

Larry O’Neill, Oregon’s state climatologist who works closely with both agencies, said the cuts will be “really detrimental, and dangerous.”

“This is a critical public service. It plays a huge role in public safety and the economy, and it’s incredibly cheap for the benefit we get,” O’Neill said.

NRCS, which measures mountain snowpack and issues water supply forecasts used for irrigation, reservoir storage and hydropower, saw its staff slashed from 12 to five. The agency may discontinue measuring mountain snowpack by summer 2026.

“We don’t know how important these programs are until they’re gone,” O’Neill said. “There is no replacement for the type of detailed local forecasts they provide. Private industry cannot and won’t replace all the important things they do.”

Per longstanding NOAA practice “we are not discussing internal personnel and management matters,” said agency spokesman Scott Smullen. “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. We continue to provide weather information, forecasts and warnings pursuant to our public safety mission.”

Loss of speed, accuracy a worry after staff shortages at NWS

The cuts could result in slower and less accurate forecasts, and what is possible for the agency to do, such as staffing major wildland fires and focusing on high-leverage situations, said O’Neill.

NWS produces a detailed forecast of every spot in Oregon, from the top of Mount Hood to the Alvord Desert. It operates weather radars that span the state.

Most notably, it issues warnings for weather that could impact travel or knock out power. It sounds the alarm when the river might flood or wildfire danger turns extreme. State and local government make decisions based on the forecasts.

“With these cuts, I think we’ll see delays or inaccurate forecasts come up, and that can have real world consequences,” O’Neill said. “And it has been done in such a haphazard way that it has removed some senior leadership and kind of left a void at the top with no plans to fill it that gap.”

Eyes in the storm

Last Monday, a powerful storm brought waves 60 feet high to the Columbia River Bar, the notoriously hazardous passageway between the Pacific Ocean and Columbia River. Each year, around 3,000 ships — carrying the world’s largest exports of wheat — make the crossing aided by the Columbia River Bar Pilots.

The bar pilots have long relied on NWS.

“We actually have a direct line to their office to talk to the meteorologists to get the best sense of how large the waves might get and when,” said Capt. Dan Jordan, administrator of the Columbia River Bar Pilots. “We use that information to make decisions about when to stop and restart shipping traffic. Without it, we won’t have the information to make the best decisions. Any disruption can really hurt commerce on the river.”

Meteorologists may be less able to work wildfires

NWS meteorologists regularly leave the office to work with incident command teams during major wildfires.

“I think one of the biggest impacts was that NWS won’t be able to provide meteorologists to work on incident management teams,” O’Neill said. “The bigger wildfires can create their own weather and turn deadly. NWS has trained their meteorologists specially for those roles, but if they’re this short-staffed, the concern is that they could no longer do that.”

The loss of technicians could also mean that when the weather radars go out, which does happen on a semi-regular basis, it will take longer to repair them. The loss of radar for extended periods jeopardizes accurate forecasting.

Loss of measuring snowpack, water supply

The Natural Resources Conservation Service does two key things in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest.

The first is that they maintain the SNOTEL network of roughly 300 weather stations that measure snow-water equivalent in the mountains.

The second is they produce water supply forecasts that feed into reservoir operations and determine irrigation allotments for the vast agriculture in central and eastern Oregon, and to a lesser extent the Willamette Valley.

The agency helps determine drought designations, so that farmers can apply for federal aid when conditions warrant.

O’Neill said that the SNOTEL network, at this point, would be discontinued by next year because it requires technicians to repair it, and most have lost their jobs.

“If we lose this, we’re basically flying blind as to how much water is stored in the snow in the mountains,” O’Neill said. “That impacts how reservoirs are managed and store water, and how they prepare to mitigate floods.

“We just won’t know how much water that we have, and that’s a pretty big problem in a state that depends on agriculture.”

Zach Urness has been an outdoors reporter in Oregon for 18 years and is host of the Explore Oregon Podcast. He can be reached at zurness@StatesmanJournal.com or (503) 399-6801. Find him on X at @ZachsORoutdoors and BlueSky at oregonoutdoors.bsky.social.

After nearly nine years of construction and a $595 million investment, the seismic retrofit and update of Oregon’s Capitol building is approaching the end of its final phase with completion expected by 2026.

Exterior work will continue into the new year, but portions of the building that have been closed to the public since July 2022 are scheduled to reopen in early September.

“The basement level is a hotbed of activity,” said Aaron Jones, superintendent with Hoffman Construction Co., during a tour of the latest progress on Wednesday.

Work continues on significant changes to basement level

The basement or “concourse level” will feature four new hearing rooms, a restaurant, and space for the news media. Two courtyards that used to sit at the concourse level have been moved up an entire level to the first floor.

According to Jones, an average of 150 workers are on site every day at this point in the project, all while the legislature is in session.

“Everyone’s trying to work together,” Jones said.

According to Jodi Jones, project director for the Capitol Accessibility, Maintenance, and Safety project, the crew will at times get calls from people inside the building about a particularly distracting noise. When that happens, the CAMS team tries to identify the source and quiet the activity for a moment.

Major milestone hit, Oregon Capitol “fully unlocked”

The CAMS project is meant to address “serious seismic problems” in the building identified in a 2013 report. A new foundation was poured to support the upgrades.

The building was “fully unlocked” last week, superintendent Jones said. That means the 160 base isolators installed are operational. Should a significant seismic event occur, the construction is intended to keep the building in one spot while the earth around it moves up to 2 feet in any direction.

The rotunda was also “beefed up” with new trusses that go around the drum to make the structure more rigid and the base of the Gold Man statue further solidified.

Workers inside the rotunda are now re-plastering and re-painting to bring previous repairs up to date. The Scott Mills earthquake damaged the area in 1993 and those repairs and paint were degrading, Jodi Jones told reporters.

The CAMS team will celebrate another milestone within a month when the final piece of a deep moat surrounding the building to separate the earth from the building is expected to be complete.

Once the moat is complete, it’ll be covered and go unseen by the public.

Dianne Lugo covers the Oregon Legislature and equity issues. Reach her at dlugo@statesmanjournal.com or on X @DianneLugo