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 ...
Ditto about the young girls and women. However, there are also numerous adults that have died. It will be along time before that part of Texas attracts tourists in any big numbers.
I live in the boonies in the next county from Kerrville. Like all the rest of the Hill Country, there are cabins and RV parks on the rivers and full of tourists every Summer and snowbirds in the Winter. We also get catastrophic floods about every 10 years, and it never appears to affect tourism, no matter how many drown or how bad the flood, so no-tourism will likely not be much affected-but maybe smart future tourists will check the weather app on their laptop or phone on a regular basis-most cabin-and-RV parks do have wifi. Texas and the other southwest states with rocky, hilly terrain have sudden floods, so the weather bears watching...
The owners of the RV parks near here made the tourists in the riverfront spaces move their rigs to the high ground as soon as possible flooding was predicted, same as they do anytime this happens-we are used to this weather...
Thanks for the local insight. This time of the year can be quite dangerous for vacationers. I recently read an article that on average 20 people lose there lives while boating on Lake Powell each year...
My 1st hubby was from rural NM and I was raised in rural W Texas-we spent many weekends and vaca times camping in the mountains there with our cub, as well as camping and hiking in Big Bend Park-we were always hyper-vigilant, especially if there was rain predicted-lots of deep draws and ravines there-being a tourist doesn’t mean being careless or uninformed...
That’s awesome... I need to try that.
I use to go on canoe trips in Canada when I was kid and young adult.. Back then all we had was a compass and a map. After a few trips I learned how to read the weather.
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