Federal government shutdown could impact SC’s coastal waters
CHARLESTON — Federal offices and agencies across South Carolina remained closed or under significantly restricted operations Oct. 2 as the federal government shutdown marched into day two.
The closure comes as South Carolina makes its way through the tail-end of the 2025 hurricane season. While local National Weather Service forecasters will remain on duty during the shutdown as essential personnel, the data streams that inform their forecasts could face disruptions long after the government returns to business as usual.
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“ The big issues are just anxiety and inefficiency,” said Debra Hernandez, the executive director of the Charleston-based Southeast Coastal Ocean Observing Regional Association, or SECOORA.
SECOORA is one of several regional organizations that form the federal government’s Integrated Ocean Observing System. That coalition provides short- and long-term weather and climate information about the ocean to federal agencies. SECOORA oversees that work along the hurricane-prone corridor of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.
Hernandez points to a recent example to illustrate the issue. A brief power outage caused a temporary disruption in the delivery of data from a sensing buoy offshore of the Carolinas. Those buoys provide information on wave height, wind, currents, salinity and temperature which then feed into hurricane and marine forecasts (among other things).
She said the issue was fixed on SECOORA’s side, but they don’t know if things are fine on the fed’s side because nobody is there to answer their questions.
“If it’s not making it through to the federal pipeline, then it can’t be used in the forecast,” she explained. “So there could be some data gaps, which in the day-to-day maybe aren’t a big deal. But if you’ve got storms approaching and rough things happening offshore, it could mean you don’t have the most up-to-date information.”
Hernandez said that this time of year also is typically when her organization lines up federal funding for the following September. But, again, nobody’s taking their calls. She said a prolonged shutdown might disrupt SECOORA’s weather monitoring work come September 2026, a period that’s historically the most active part of the Atlantic hurricane season.
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