“It takes 11 to 14 months to onboard somebody,” Tom Fahy, legislative director of the National Weather Service Employees Organization, the union that represents the agency’s workers, as well as other units of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told Capital & Main.

After widespread staffing cuts earlier this year, the NWS recently gained approval to hire for hundreds of positions.

Cuts to the federal weather forecasting agency have been criticized in the wake of a deadly flooding event in Texas, where local offices were understaffed.