New York is investing millions of state dollars in weather tracking and emergency preparedness, aiming to gird the state against the worst of new, more extreme weather patterns — but state officials are facing challenges as the federal government wipes away billions of dollars in investment, national weather tracking and emergency relief.

On Friday, Gov. Kathleen C. Hochul toured the State Weather Risk Communication Center, a state-of-the-art technical and academic department run by SUNY University at Albany that opened two years ago. The State Weather Risk Communication Center consists of a team of meteorologists and state emergency management staff, a state-of-the-art laboratory, and works closely with the New York state Mesonet, a state-run weather tracking system developed after Hurricane Sandy.

“We have the National Weather Service offices here, we’re across the street from the state’s emergency operations center, when there’s a crisis all these systems coordinate together,” Hochul said. “That’s the beauty of this. We have the first partnership of its kind, funded by the state of New York, bringing together top meteorologists, atmospheric scientists, social scientists and emergency managers to deliver real time information.”

Hochul said this is all necessary as the state sees a sharp increase in severe weather — hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes, severe snow storms, record heat and record cold have all hit the state repeatedly since Hochul took office in 2021.

“Don’t even call it extreme weather, this is weather, this is the normal weather that we are experiencing, and it’s a shame that this was forecasted by thought leaders decades ago, that if mankind didn’t stop it’s assault on mother nature, there would be revenge,” she said. “Well, mother nature is getting her revenge now.”

Hochul noted that the state was hit with two hurricanes in quick succession just weeks after she took over for former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in 2021, and has since seen a massively deadly snow storm hit Buffalo and northern New York, dozens of brush fires — the first time a wildfire has been recorded in New York, and as many as 37 tornadoes in all regions of the state just these last 18 months.

“We’re not here to alarm people, but we need to be vigilant, and I want people to know about our preparation and what response system we have in place,” Hochul said.

She said the SWRCC spins up at the first sign of trouble and coordinates with local and statewide emergency teams in advance of expected weather events, and she’s also directed her staff to run ‘tabletop exercises’ laying out the order of operations for all major emergency scenarios.

Hochul acknowledged the devastating flash floods in southern Texas, which have killed over 100 people as of Friday with hundreds more still missing. Details are still unclear, but some have raised questions over how prepared the state of Texas was for the floods, and if they gave enough warning to people in the flood path about the danger.

Hochul said that disaster is what prompted her attention to New York’s systems, and she organized Friday’s tour of the SWRCC as a result.

“I want to make sure our team is on top of this, because there is no room for a mistake or failure when people’s lives are on the line,” she said.

But challenges to New York’s preparedness have come from the federal government — as President Donald J. Trump and the Republicans who control Congress continue to make massive cuts to the federal workforce and grant programs, they’ve cut investments in emergency preparedness. Hochul said that 12 people at the Albany weather center are losing their jobs, and $3 million in FEMA funding has been pulled back from the state Mesonet.

All together, state Department of Emergency Services and Homeland Security Jackie Bray said the federal government has withheld three grant programs usually distributed to the states in May annually — the Urban Area Security Initiative, which provides $100 million for security in New York City and on Long Island. The federal government has also withheld the State Homeland Security grant that funds bomb squads and tactical teams in state and local police forces statewide, and the Emergency Management grant program that provides $300 million to New York for training and equipment for state emergency management staff.

“I am hopeful, I still want to believe the federal government will do the right thing here and release these grants and release them quickly, but it certainly is incredibly concerning for people in my job across the whole country, that we may not be able to have the partnership to rely on,” Bray said.

Hochul said cuts to emergency preparedness, especially to counterterrorism programs, hit primarily Democratic states harder than Republican states, exemplified by New York itself. She said she has concerns about the high number of Jewish and Muslim New Yorkers and the potential for terror attacks targeting either group in light of the tense global situation.

“A place like New York, we are at more of a risk for a terror attack for the reasons I outlined, but also precedent,” she said. “9/11, anyone?”

Hochul said weather events are only going to get worse into the future as well — pointing to the ongoing increase in greenhouse gasses building up in the atmosphere, steadily increasing global temperature averages and federal reversals on green energy programs domestically.

New York itself is bound to reach certain climate goals under the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act passed in 2019 — but the Hochul administration has now acknowledged that not all of the aggressive goals set in that legislation are possible now. The governor pointed to federal reversals on green energy projects and other federal actions indirectly impacting development in New York, even though state watchdogs including the Comptroller have said for years, even under the green energy-boosting Biden administration, that New York was unlikely to reach the goals of the CLCPA.

“Those goals remain, they are statutory, and I believe we will hit many of them, especially our longer term ones,” Hochul said. “We’re on a path towards sustainability, that’s why you heard me talk about my fight to save offshore wind. Unfortunately, because of decisions made in Washington, I believe there will be a setback. Some of the initiatives that we’ve leaned hard into that these goals were based on, predicated on offshore wind and solar really emerging as primary energy sources.”

Hochul said Washington and the Trump administration are actively hostile to developing wind and solar energy — the Trump administration tried and failed to kill an offshore wind installation downstate earlier this year, and the Republican budget bill signed by Trump on July 4 cuts a majority of the federal green energy tax credits that were helping to build new facilities.

“I’m just dealing in reality here,” Hochul said. “And also the supply chain challenges that slowed down the advent of offshore wind during the pandemic, and now everything costs more because of inflation, and we have tariffs, we’re at (economic) war with the countries that provide the steel and the materials for turbines. I’m a very pragmatic person, but I’m not giving up on the aspirations of ensuring that we meet these goals, it will just not be on the immediate time frame because of factors outside our control.”