The Trump administration’s personnel reduction to the National Weather Service (NWS) has pushed critical forecasting offices to their limit just as hurricane seasons ramps up in the Atlantic, the Washington Post reported on Saturday.

The outlet spoke to several current and former employees who are concerned the massive reductions in staff over the past year, roughly 600 individuals, have forced some forecasters to cover shifts on a “buddy system,” where understaffed offices have had to seek help from those in other regions.

Tom Fahy, legislative director for the National Weather Service Employees Organization, the union that represents the agency’s workers told the outlet, “We have a strained and severely stretched situation,” noting that while the NWS has had a uniquely committed staff, “there’s a breaking point.”

For the moment, weary employees have managed to keep weather monitoring and forecasting running with little disruption, some current staff said. But many question how long they can sustain the effort. If the government shuts down when funding expires on Oct. 1, many could be forced to continue working without pay.

Fahy noted two NWS locations, one in California’s Central Valley and another in western Kansas, that no longer have enough employees to operate 24 hours. “There are still a dozen offices across the country that are operating on reduced staffs,” he added.

In February, the Commerce Department required the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to trim its IT budget by 50%. The resulting cuts primarily effected cloud services and agency networks that transmit weather and climate information. The following month the Trump administration, with the recommendation by the Department of Government Efficiency, announced staffing cuts to NOAA of close 1,000 jobs. Leading experts in the field of weather forecasting expressed their dismay at the administration’s firings saying they would lead to less accurate forecasting and therefore deadlier storms.

Among the critical needs, the NWS announced earleir in the year it was eliminating or reducing weather balloon launches which experts say will weaken forecasting efforts. D. James Baker, a former NOAA chief during the Clinton administration called the balloons “an absolutely essential piece of the forecasting system,” adding, “The thing about weather balloons is that they give you information you can't get any other way."

John Sokich, who spent 45 years at the Weather Service before retiring in January, said the agency has become ‘unfortunately, incredibly adept’ at sustaining forecasts and warnings under pressure. “They’re going to run out of gas,” Sokich said. “They’re going to start missing things. They can’t sustain that level of effort for much longer. You just can’t sprint a mile.”