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 ...
Peruse through the rest of the thread. Flash floods are common in the area, and the Texas government hasn’t done their part to prepare or mitigate the looming threat. There are manmade measures that can be taken…Installing siren alerts along the river, restoring forests to act as buffers, etc…
Unfortunately many people don’t have cell service in this part of hill country. And apparently Sirens were deliberately voted against being installed.
To clarify, this is not on the National Weather Service to do…but Texas.
I’m in Texas, and I have gotten the warnings. Right now, the weather app in my phone says that there is a flood watch until 1 pm Sunday, July 6. Earlier today, I received an emergency alert on my phone about flash flood conditions.
I’ve not noticed that the area around Kerrville, where the drownings happened, has inadequate cell coverage. True, I don’t go that way often... but I assume they would have received warnings, as well.
You think it takes six hundred people to issue a flash flood warning?
Law Not in effect until October 2025.
It is a legitimate question. But based on the responses I’ve seen from people who are probably a lot more familiar with the situation than I am, it doesn’t appear the cuts had an impact on the response. But it’s absolutely a fair question.
Actually - the “sensor” could be as simple as an Alka Seltzer wafer. I placed them in the basement in between two strips of a beer can and wired to a battery hooked to a buzzer. The wafer dissolves in the flooded basement (water leak) and the alarm goes off! Luckily my patches to the old galvanized pipes lasted until I got the plastic pipes in.
What garbage. The 2015 Wimberley flash flood killed a bunch of people too. Where was the sainted NWS then? Oh, and guess who was president in 2015?
sigh. it’s not the Weather service but TX can afford to do better to prepare for these scenarios.
I just watched a drone flyover of the camp. The camp is situated on a hillside with cabins and barracks that extend down towards the river. I am guessing a couple hundred girls or so were in the flood zone. If they would have had a warning, higher ground was not that far away..
Ha, my phone does texts and calls. Everything else is my ol’ laptop. :-D
That’s all the warning the government needs to give you, but you need the infrastructure in order to give those kinds of warnings.
Kids are dead, sir.
I’m not such an ideologue, if kids are going to die that I’m going to stick with my ideology.
I don’t think that it goes against my libertarian sensibilities to have the infrastructure to allow people to know when they might be at risk of disaster. Even just a text message.
I do think the adults erred if they didn’t have somebody who took the nightshift in order to be in position to be aware of any possible disasters.
Kristi Noem, at a conference, today, with Governor Abbott, said that the U.S. Weather Service is using very antiquated equipment. It cannot detect weather changes that would have gave the alarm that something was happening that was very deadly.
I live in Kerr County. As to an alert/siren system I vaguely remember that coming up here years ago. It was likely in the nineties.
It was more about low water crossings than the river, IIRC. I think some company set up some sample ones. Here in Kerrville/Kerr County they used to let citizens vote on these things. Now, even if citizens vote no, our City Council/County Commissioners wait awhile, and then do whatever they want.
About 900 PATCO members never went on strike and were immediately available at work. For the remaining positions, air traffic controllers in the military were temporarily moved into the civilian positions and retired air traffic controllers agreed to come out of retirement and work until an adequate number of new air traffic controllers could be trained and deployed.
Good post.
I disagree with some of the DOGE cuts, such as the cuts to NWS.
But NWS sent out warnings. Unfortunately, most people don’t hear or pay much attention to cell phone text warnings in the middle of the night.
But a loud siren would get everyone’s attention.
Also, maybe children’s summer camps shouldn’t be located in a spot known as “Flash Flood Alley,” a place where other lives have been taken by floods.
This is a terrible tragedy.
You’re really pushing this. Article after article.
Transparent agenda
Thank you. Saved me some keyboarding.
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