Right before Hurricane Harvey came barreling down on Texas, residents had a few days to prepare. That’s thanks to the sophisticated forecasts of the National Hurricane Center, which is now scrambling to figure out where Hurricane Irma will make landfall in the US. But if the budget cuts that President Donald Trump has requested are implemented, the agencies that give people vital time to get ready for a massive storm will have their budgets slashed — making weather forecasting vulnerable.

The president’s budget proposal calls for a whopping 17 percent cut to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It also calls for trimming 6 percent of the budget for the National Weather Service (NWS), the NOAA agency in charge of…

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