Stephen Baron, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Gray, holds a weather balloon in one hand and a radiosonde in the other in preparation for launch ahead of the expected arrival of Hurricane Lee in September 2023. Before the launches were suspended Friday, the Gray office typically launched two weather balloons every day to track patterns and released four per day during extreme weather events like hurricanes. Ben McCanna/Portland Press Herald

The National Weather Service is suspending launches of weather balloons at its station in Gray, citing staffing shortfalls.

The changes are “effective immediately, and until further notice,” the weather service wrote in a message Friday to subscribers of its wire service. Balloon launches in Albany, New York, have also been temporarily suspended.

“Offices will perform twice daily launches when staffing permits,” Mike Hopkins, director of the surface and upper air division, wrote in the memo to forecasters.

He did not specify what the staffing figures at either site were, when they dropped low enough to warrant the suspension of programming, or how many new hires would be needed to resume the service.

Susan Buchanan, director of public affairs at the weather service, said Saturday morning that the agency had no further comment beyond the memo.

The weather service office in Gray on Saturday directed questions about staffing levels and the impact that suspending weather balloon flights will have on forecasts back to the national public affairs office.

“We can add that we have not suspended any flights at this time, but we will suspend some flights in the future based on future staffing profiles,” Donald Dumont, a meteorologist based at the Gray office, said in an email Saturday afternoon.

Within hours of the news, forecasters at news outlets throughout New England and the country decried the decision on social media. Many argued that it would undermine forecasting for affected communities.

The Gray weather service office provides forecast information for southern, central and western Maine, plus all of New Hampshire. The Albany office covers New York’s Capital District and Hudson Valley regions, as well as southern Vermont, western Massachusetts and northwestern Connecticut.

The weather service typically uses balloons — which carry tools called radiosondes — to collect data on temperature, dew points, humidity, pressure, wind speed and wind direction, Hopkins said in the memo.

“Data is also collected from instruments aboard commercial aircraft, surface observing stations, satellites, radars and buoys,” he said.

Staff writer Katie Langley contributed to this report.