Hurricane season starts on June 1, and there are dark clouds hovering over the National Weather Service.

The nation's forecasting agency has lost nearly 600 employees since President Donald Trump's second term began in January, leaving some bureaus short-staffed. Some offices with vacancies are located in major areas, including New York City, Houston, and Tampa.

Meteorologists are concerned that potentially life-saving warnings could be broadcast too late or that inaccurate information could be disseminated.

The American Meteorological Society has urged Congress and the Trump administration to maintain staffing levels at U.S. weather agencies. The organization states that, in addition to saving lives, the value of weather and climate information to the U.S. economy exceeds $100 billion annually, which they claim is 10 times the amount invested by taxpayers.

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"Recent reductions in staffing and funding across federal agencies threaten the carefully established balance of the enterprise, placing the entire chain of observations, quality control, model forecasts, and decision support for the protection of life and property at risk," the organization said. "A failure of these systems would be catastrophic, causing, for example, shorter tornado warning lead times, more uncertainty in hurricane landfall intensity and location, and worse forecasts of snowfall amounts — all of which will put the pocketbooks and lives of hard-working Americans at greater risk.

"Data delivery failures and worse forecasts also will create costly and dangerous delays for sensitive private sector systems and clients like power companies, transportation, real-time risk management, and data farms. Further, the members of our U.S. Armed Forces regularly depend on timely, accurate weather forecast information underpinned by NOAA, meaning that any degradation of services could have disastrous consequences on their lives and to our national security."

The Trump administration has vowed to cut non-discretionary spending by the government.