Did the DOGE layoffs at the National Weather Service just kill a bunch of people?

Augusta Free Press ^ | July 5, 2025 | Chris Graham

[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.

[Clutch Martin]

During govt shut down during Obama, which was in the fall, which was hurricane season. Obamma shuttered the National Weather Service. DURING the PEAK of HURRICANE SEASON. Website gone, products switched off... offshore data buoys idle’d... WTF! BHO wanted retribution... and he’s stooopid

[Allegra]

If you wait till then nobody cares. Seem any policy discussion about Tennessee lately? Maui? Etc?

Most of us care more about people getting rescued right now. Especially all of those children.

Only soulless leftist scum prioritize assigning blame at this stage.

[dandiegirl]

It was still storming. Thunder, lightning no electricity, pitch black except for the lightning. Hell on earth for these people. Happened in an instant.

[mmichaels1970]

Leftists on X are dancing on the graves of children.

[Clutch Martin]

“How many people in your neighborhood used national weather service as their “go to” source of news?”

In all probability every weather feed in the United States uses the weather service as a baseline for their information.

[dandiegirl]

Yes, but no one ever dreamed it would be that bad.

[Captainpaintball]

No. But weather modification did. Are the Trump Chumps smart enough to figure this out?

[Labyrinthos]

“My province has a provincial wide alert system that goes off whenever something happens in the province.”

Eh? (I am trying to be funny.)

[mmichaels1970]

I am surprised they waited as long as they did for this crap.

They didn’t. “Trump and Musk have blood on their hands” was all over X writhin hours. Parents are still searching for children and leftists are playing political games. They are disgusting excuses for humans.

[stanne]

T’was brutal. One of the boys braved it and took me into town for pizza. They were the only places open, the pizza ovens are gas.

He taught me how to drive in the snow. How to not skid

We froze. Two weeks with no electricity

The government wasn’t depended on

[HereInTheHeartland]

“ Yes, but no one ever dreamed it would be that bad.”

Yes rainfalls exceeded the large totals that were listed.
National Weather Service did give warnings however of an extraordinary rain event. Budget cuts didn’t cause this.
It’s a horrific tragedy what happened

[rlmorel]

When I was around ten years old I lived on the US Navy base in Yokosuka, Japan.

Every day at noon and at 5 PM (I think) they would set off these air raid sirens all over the base. Just to mark the time I guess.

I don't know how many they had, but I would have to guess somewhere between five and ten sirens spread all over the base.

When they sounded off, you could hear all of them over the base going in and out of phase with each other In an eerie and creepy sound. It must have evoked a lot of memories over there.

And we had one of the sirens on top of our quarters.

We lived in a building that had once been devoted to the task of Imperial Japanese Navy parachute maintenance. It was a large concrete building that had been divided up into perhaps eight units for officers quarters to house their families.

We had one of those sirens on top of this two story building and one day, I found the door (to the rooftop where the siren was) unlocked.

I resolved to go up and listen up close to that siren when it went off at 5 PM, and I got up there about five minutes before it went off.

I can't say if this is what it looked like, but this is how it looks in my memory:

It was really big, and all black.

When it started, it was scary, but it rapidly got so loud I was really scared. I was perhaps five feet away from it and it not only hurt my ears, it made my heart pound. I felt like I wanted to run, but I didn't.

Crazy. I never saw that door to the roof unlocked again either, after that.

We lived on Navy bases growing up, and there were always areas and buildings that were abandoned and locked up, but whenever we found a way to get in, we did.

The US Navy base at Yokosuka was hilly in a Japanese kind of way. Those hills were honeycombed with tunnels. They had been meticulously boarded up by Seabees (I think) and walled off by large, stout, wooden structures with padlocked doors for access. They were impenetrable. I know this, because we tried. We were always trying to get into those caves.

Well, one day, my brother (who was 12 at the time, and I was 11) found a tunnel with no padlock on it.

We went back to the house and got my dad's spotlight that had a big rectangular external battery you could carry on your shoulder, and you plugged the cigarette lighter connecter on the spotlight into it.

We went back to the cave and went in. The handheld spotlight was one of those brilliant ones (like the ones on top of a cop car) and we were perhaps 50 yards of complex cave detours to the left or right when my brother accidentally dropped the light. When that light hit the ground and went out, it was black. Completely, totally and absolutely black.

I remember, at that point, with a sharp pang of panic listening to my older brother shaking the light (thinking the filament might be broken) and his voice had an odd quaver deep in that tunnel, that we did not have any backup light or matches. Nothing. My heart began to race as the panic rose up in me while we fumbled unsuccessfully in the pitch black to get the light going. I think we were both immediately convinced that the light had broken when it hit the ground, and we knew we were screwed. There were dozens and dozens of those tunnels on the base, and we were hundreds of feet in. In retrospect, when we didn't appear for dinner, my parents would begin looking for us, and eventually, the Navy would get involved, and search parties would go out, they probably would have found that one tunnel with no lock and an open door, and would have found us, eventually.

But in that inky blackness, I didn't think like that. I thought they might never find us.

Eventually, after a minute or two, my brother realized that when the light had fallen to the ground, the cigarette lighter connecter had jerked loose. He plugged it in, we got out, and never went back in any tunnels again.

[Secret Agent Man]

Feminist orange man bad media

[catnipman]

complete nonsense ...

the NWS forecast model is automated: the model produces a new U.S. national forecast four times every 24 hours with an individual forecast for every model gridpoint on the national map, with each gridpoint representing an area approximately .25 square miles ... boundary conditions for the model are also automatically fed into the model from automatic measurements made at thousands of NWS stations around the country ...

model output is automatically output to multiple public feeds including a public website ...

here’s an example:

https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lon=-105.275&lat=40.027

cutting a few hundred NWS staff doesn’t do squat, and certainly doesn’t cause flash flooding warnings from the model to be ignored by local governments ...

[Shortstop7]

It was a flash flood. FLASH FLOOD.

[FlingWingFlyer]

Bingo. Only any idiot would go to the National Weather Service. Catch all the little clips of starving penguins and polar bears. I’ve always gone to local weather stations and stayed on a local channel that has a scroll and lists all the “To Whom It May Concern” counties. I don’t waste my time with the weather channel because I don’t care about what the weather is going to be in Lisbon, Fuji or Budapest.

[CondoleezzaProtege]

Fire hydrants weren’t filled, water reserves were empty, and brush had overgrown after years of neglect….prior to the CA wildfires.

Regarding Texas, there were not enough preventative measures taken to prepare for a flood like this. Nobody in government has prioritized it.

This is why many Americans’ illnesses don’t get cured. You have a culture hellbent on treating symptoms as they arise over and over, instead of getting to the root and enacting lifestyle change.

[Señor Presidente]

Regardless of the facts here, it must be observed that these articles always push these presumptions: a) the government can, and should, be responsible for alleviating all problems, and b) government funding— or “cuts,” as the case may be— directly determine the effectiveness of the former.

Neither is true. They should explain how giving a government which accumulated $37,000,000,000,000 in debt will be prudential with one more cent of funding from taxpayers.

[stanne]

Now you are getting to the point

[exDemMom]

Nice fear-mongering. In reality, we’ve been getting flash flood warnings in our phones, and the weather forecasts have been as accurate as always.