St. John’s, Antigua – With a 79 percent chance of an above-normal Atlantic hurricane season this year, national agencies in Antigua and Barbuda say they are ramping up readiness efforts, even as key departments continue to face logistical and resource-based challenges.

Preparedness and Response Manager at the National Office of Disaster Services (NODS), Anderson Tuitt, believes the country is “between an eight and a nine” in terms of readiness. But he warns that NODS doesn’t operate in isolation.

“Our ability to respond effectively depends heavily on the readiness of our partner agencies—emergency services, humanitarian groups, and community networks,” he said.

“Nothing is ever perfect,” Tuitt added, but said that agencies have been holding regular planning meetings ahead of the 2025 hurricane season, which officially began on June 1. “Most, if not all, have said they are ready should anything happen.”

The 2025 Atlantic Hurricane Season is forecasted to be an especially active one, with the Met Office predicting 21 named storms, nine hurricanes, and five major hurricanes.

Understaffed and Under Equipped

Director at the Antigua & Barbuda Meteorological Office, Dale Destin has been calling for 12 additional staff positions that were promised by the government but have yet to be delivered. He said this would greatly help ease the strain on employees who sometimes work shifts exceeding 24 hours.

“It’s been long in coming, if you ask me,” he said. “However, we continue to press as much as possible the powers that be and impress upon them the need to provide these additional members of staff.”

His department also lacks “a purpose-built office” that is both climate-resilient and large enough to support its expanding team.

Funding is urgently needed to repair and replace broken automatic weather stations, which are vital for collecting accurate weather data. “We also continue to try to impress upon the treasury for the release of funds  for the repair of automatic weather stations. Automatic weather stations are very crucial in terms of data collection, ability to monitor what is happening at any given time.”

Destin further stressed that while AI forecasting tools are being hailed as revolutionary, they are ineffective without reliable data inputs.

Meanwhile, some hurricane shelters are said to need “minor repairs” but are in a state of readiness still considered operational. Still, the country lacks purpose-built shelters, instead of retrofitting facilities like public schools and private churches.

According to Tuitt, NODS has had discussions over the last three years regarding this, adding that they are looking for funding to create the shelters. One in every district he suggested beginning over the next three years.

US Funding Cuts Threaten Caribbean Disaster Preparedness and Weather Forecasting

Meanwhile, Antigua and Barbuda’s disaster preparedness and meteorological response capabilities are under pressure as U.S. funding cuts take a toll on regional projects and data infrastructure. Funding shortfalls have halted regional infrastructure projects tied to early warning systems, weather modelling, and data sharing. Officials fear these setbacks could lead to slower forecasts and more costly storm responses.

“We would have had an early warning for flooding project that was about to get underway, that is obviously scrapped. And there’s also a project that we had regarding tsunami that too came to a screeching destruction as it were,” Destin shared.

A major concern is reduced access to data from U.S. “hurricane hunter” aircraft—specialised planes that fly into storm systems to collect data used for forecasting.

According to Destin, withholding the data from weather stations will cause notable degradation of the scales of the forecast models which disaster offices depend on for guidance in tropical cyclone monitoring and forecasting.

“The support has been cut, and so we have a number of these stations that are not functioning. These stations are very crucial with respect to the data that they collect that inputs into the forecast models.”

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Training has also been affected. Tuitt noted that USAID and other U.S.-based agencies once funded a large portion of disaster training initiatives.

“USAID have funded quite a bit of our training, and other US-based donor agencies have funded us tremendously over the years. So the sudden cutback has really some serious impacts on our training, how we go about  facilitating persons to be in a state of readiness.  And if we are not training our persons, then means that certain aspects of our preparedness  will suffer”.

Tuitt explained that the absence of data will further hinder the training, which in the broader perspective, hampers preparedness, since “you only can be prepared based on information”.

Naturally, the loss of that external funding is now placing additional strain on the national budget. The government will likely need to allocate more money to maintain preparedness levels, or seek new sources of financial support locally, regionally, or internationally.

Disaster officials say they are now seeking alternative sources of support and urging greater investment from international donors to fill the gap. “And that is one of the things that is coming out of what’s happening in the U.S. The need for us to be more reliant upon ourselves,” Destin highlighted.