The National Weather Service will resume translations on Monday for non-English speakers.
The agency stopped providing translations earlier in April after a contract with an AI translation provider had ended.
The service provided Spanish, Chinese, French, Vietnamese and Samoan translations of forecasts and warnings.
The contract ended as the Trump administration hopes to slash federal funding, including jobs at the National Weather Service’s parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
More than 68 million people in the U.S. speak a language other than English. In North Carolina, that includes nearly 1 million people— about 10% of the population. These services are important for non-English speakers during severe weather.
"By not translating, you are cutting off a warning source to a large percentage of the population that are non-English speakers," UNC-Charlotte meteorology professor Terry Shirley said.
Shirley said the lapse occurred at a crucial time for severe weather alerts in North Carolina.
"The months of April and May in the Carolinas are where we see a lot of thunderstorms," Shirley said. "It's where we see a lot of tornado risks, large hail, damaging winds and flash flooding."
NOAA says translation services were expected to be operational by the end of Monday.
