The question isn’t whether there will be severe weather racing up the eastern seaboard. The question is whether we will know about it in time to prepare.

For an island of 2.9 million people jutting nearly 120 miles out into the Atlantic Ocean, it is not a casual question. It is just as critical as the question of whether the federal government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is still capable of fulfilling its function following draconian cuts in staff, the closing of offices, and the elimination of research programs.

NOAA’s predictions for this year’s Atlantic hurricane season call for as many as 19 — a “busier-than-normal” season — but it will be a function of ocean temperatures, moist humid air, and wind currents.

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s recent announcement that she is implementing emergency and weather alert text messages for residents reveals that the state realizes NOAA’s cuts may have a direct and immediate impact on New York. Her announcement correctly anticipates the coming storm season, and this text effort seeks to put into place one more messaging mechanism that would warn residents of potentially severe weather.

Regrettably, it is a program of best intentions. Alerts are only as good as the available forecasting data. With significant reductions in federal weather agency staffing and programs assigned to interpret and predict weather patterns, that crucial data is absent. The state is left dependent on scattered reporting stations that can only provide current conditions rather than meteorological insight.

In addition, weather that arrives in New York is the result of patterns that have either traveled west to east or south to north, far beyond any individual reporting station in the Empire State. Without a comprehensive, national approach to gathering weather data, there is no appreciation of what the next seven days have in store. During World War II, this meteorological fact of life was well known with the Allies destroying four clandestine German weather stations on Greenland, effectively blinding the Nazis to incoming European weather approaching from the Atlantic. That played a decisive role in the success of attacking Normandy’s beaches on D-Day.

Today, if the repeated path of destruction from violent Midwest tornadoes is any indication, there is now ample proof that weather patterns are becoming more severe and arriving more often. Accurate and timely predictions have always been a matter of life or death, but there will be far more peril ahead with the loss of NOAA resources.

Private forecasters and university researchers around the nation are now using their own resources and computer modeling to predict long-term weather trends, but the gap that NOAA leaves is immeasurable. While one might be able to replace some of their sophisticated equipment and research tools, what can’t be replaced is the hundreds of years of collective experience those departed professionals brought to data interpretation. That skill, insight, and hard-won knowledge about forecasting can’t be easily purchased or recalled.

With its latest hurricane season forecast, NOAA has placed the Atlantic seaboard on notice that it may be vulnerable to at least 19 storms and the devastation they bring in their wake. What we can’t forecast is what impact the cuts inflicted on this critical federal agency will have on our ability to accurately predict where, when, and with what strength those storms will descend on the most densely populated, low-lying island within the continental United States: Long Island.

n THIS GUEST ESSAY reflects the views of Bill Evans, owner and chief meteorologist for WLNG Radio in Sag Harbor and WFRM Radio in Sagaponack.