Posted on 07/05/2025 5:11:08 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
A slow-moving storm that dumped more than a foot of rain in the Texas Hill Country has killed 27 people, with dozens more missing, and officials are saying they weren’t prepared because the National Weather Service got the forecast wrong.
Wonder if Donald Trump and Elon Musk laying off 600 National Weather Service staffers earlier this year could have had anything to do with that?
…Deadly flash floods are, unfortunately, not uncommon – 10 teens at a summer camp died during a flash-flood event from a storm that dumped 11 inches of rain in Kerrville in 1987, and 13 people died in flooding from a six-inch rainstorm in San Antonio just three weeks ago.
Which is to say, there’s a reason Texas Hill Country is also known as Flash Flood Alley.
…On the meteorologists, the National Weather Service isn’t talking, but you do have to wonder how much the mass layoffs ordered by DOGE, in line with the Project 2025 plan to dismantle the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has eroded the ability of the NWS to keep on top of things.
The bulk of the staffers let go were specialized climate scientists and weather forecasters, and an internal document obtained by The New York Times warned that the agency was on the verge of offering “degraded” forecasting services because it was facing “severe shortages” of meteorologists.
In May, five past directors of the National Weather Service issued a letter warning that Trump’s cuts “leave the nation’s official weather forecasting entity at a significant deficit, just as we head into the busiest time for severe storm predictions like tornadoes and hurricanes.”
“Our worst nightmare is that weather forecast offices will be so understaffed that there will be needless loss of life,” the directors wrote in that letter.
(Excerpt) Read more at augustafreepress.com ...
- Sirens along the river.
- Forest restoration to act as buffer zones.
- Can’t completely stop catastrophe but at least allow for more long term preparedness.
“Houston said it would plant 200k trees by 2030 near bayous. It’s only planted 35,000. The city has been restoring bayou forests by planting native trees to mitigate heat and prevent flooding.”
If this rain would have occurred in the middle of the day, much of this would have been avoided.
Sirens through the night would help…
Try the Weather Channel app on your phone. They are the best. /s Truly, that is the worst piece of forecasting crap out there.
I am a bit of a weather bug. When I woke up Friday morning and saw the radar presentation plus the Doppler radar rainfall estimates, I told my wife that people were going to die today. The NWS had issued a PDS (Particularly Dangerous Situation) similar to when a large tornado is on the ground. I am not tooting my horn in any way but I know how people crowd Texas rivers on the 4th in the Hill Country. It is so sad.
“ - Sirens along the river.
- Forest restoration to act as buffer zones.
- Can’t completely stop catastrophe but at least allow for more long term preparedness.”
Sirens along the river?
They were going to do what, exactly, in this situation. Give me details. I think you should find out what happened first
Forest restoration? I live 50 miles from there. Forest? I can’t even grow grass here.
A bunch of trees are going to stop a wall of water that went from 7 ft to 40 feet in like 30 minutes?
Sirens?
Forest reforestation? Have you ever been there? It is lined with steep, impervious limestone cliffs with some of the poorest soils in the world. The only thing that will grow on them is cedar, mesquite, and cactus.
You are the consummate Monday morning quarterback.
They were useless work from home Climate Change employees. Without them, the rest of the crew carried on with their suboptimal performance on billion dollar supercomputers without entering the necessary geo=engineering data. Remember, with NWS their best predictions come 24 hours after the event.
No, they didn’t. the left is going to try that nonsense, but I haven’t seen any glitch or failure to predict the weather as accurately (or inaccurately) as was done in the past.
AI and the deep state news media will claim otherwise, but they’re still full of malarkey.
National Guard is on the job
Coast Guard is there, was reported on Steve Bannon show this morning
State and County air assets entered the area very quickly.
Search and Rescue ops - game wardens with specialized off-road vehicles are involved
Fire departments and Police from Boerne, San Antonio and other cities in Texas are on site
Did you see any press conferences?
The mayor of Kerrville, city manager and the sheriff took questions this morning and were very informed, informative and never took a swipe at DeSantis. And they were brief.
Bannon speculated that the governor was not at that press conference only because SARvwas still ongoing
Right on.
Didn’t this also happen in NC last year under President Autopen? Crickets.
No! The Friggin’ FAR-LEFT “MEDIA” DID.
We were camping maybe 20 years ago on a river. About 3am, a ranger came by and warned everyone the river would rise 40 feet within 30 minutes so drag your tents up past the markings line. That was all the warning we had.
Kayakers and rafters came the next day from multiple states as the news spread.
No Chrissy. BUT PLANNED PARENTHOOD DID!
Karen Bass and Gavin Newsom will never learn that lesson because it's easier to blame Trump.
Having survived a direct hit on my dwelling from an F1 tornado back in 2003 I pay damn close attention to the NWS Storm Prediction Center forecasts. They’re pretty accurate and if anything ere on the side of caution. If my area is shown as SLIGHT or above, I stay up and watch the radar until the threat has passed. Lost many hours of sleep but once was enough. Not second guessing the folks in Texas but I’da been awake the entire night.
Heat, on/off rain/droughts the soil drys out for a period of time and people might forget and then a violent, sudden thunderstorm or ‘’super cell’’ and dry baked soil can't absorb it all. Like a long , long time ago working in construction watching a large concrete pumper suddenly go.
I was living across the river in Hudson County, NJ.
I remember that winter.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.