Texas NWS office had no warning coordination meteorologist during the flood. Did it make a difference?

CNN

8 hours ago

On the night the deadly floodwaters raged down the Guadalupe River in Texas, the National Weather Service forecast office in Austin/San Antonio was missing a key leader of its team: the warning coordination meteorologist, who had retired just a few months prior.
Along with about 400 other experts at the NWS, the WCM at that office, Paul Yura, took an early retirement offer in April, according to an official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the agency. Yura could not be reached for comment.
That early retirement option, also given to employees at other parts of NOAA and across the government, was part of the Department of Government Efficiency-related budget cuts designed to shrink the size of the federal government.
The missing WCM is coming under scrutiny in the wake of the tragedy that has killed more than 120 people because they are the meteorologist responsible for interacting with emergency managers and public officials to ensure they know how to handle a severe weather event, should one occur.
Much of their work takes place before extreme weather hits, with tabletop simulations, relationship building exercises and other activities designed to foster close working relationships between weather forecasters, emergency managers and local leaders.
It is 'hard to tell how much of an impact' the WCM's absence had that night, since the office had five staff members on duty, compared to the typical staffing level of two at that time of night, and they were communicating with emergency managers as the flood threat ramped up, the NOAA official told CNN.
The official, along with other experts who spoke to CNN, said they did not think the vacancy affected the forecast. They noted the approximately three hours of warning lead time provided to many communities along the Guadalupe River, starting when the first flash flood warning was issued at 1:14 a.m. CT on July 4.
'You can do a lot in three hours,' the official said, referring to taking flood safety measures.
The Trump administration has targeted the NWS, along with NOAA overall, for steep staff reductions since the start of the president's second term.
The NWS had about 4,400 staff members in January and this has fallen to about 3,700 as of this past week, according to the NOAA official.
Some NWS offices are now so poorly staffed, they are no longer operating 24/7 and are not launching weather balloons — a vital source of weather data — at their typical cadence of twice a day.
The NWS did recently receive an exemption to the federal hiring freeze to bring on about 125 meteorologists, but it won't make up for all the employees lost through early retirements, firings and other DOGE-related cuts.
While it appears these cuts did not degrade the Weather Service's response in Texas, experts are still concerned as the peak of hurricane season is looming. The agency has not yet begun to hire those 125 roles and this season is expected to be another above-average one.
Brian LaMarre, a former meteorologist-in-charge at the NWS' Tampa office, who also served as a WCM in Lubbock, Texas, earlier in his career, told CNN any mistakes that led to so many lost lives in this disaster were made once the warnings left the NWS forecast office in New Braunfels, Texas.
In his view, they were not a result of the missing WCM position.
'The break was outside of the weather service, and that's always been the biggest nightmare,' he said. 'Hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, wildfires, whatever it is when we issue a warning, we could get several hours (of lead time), just like San Antonio did. It was a three-hour lead time… and no one was acting,' he said.
'It became a dissemination challenge for people that didn't have a phone in their hand, or weren't woken up by a siren, which they don't have on the river,' LaMarre added.
Much of the WCM's role is to work with the emergency management community and public officials well in advance of any severe weather, to conduct exercises and establish communications channels, for example. It's unclear if those activities stopped once Yura left in April. Even if they did, there was only a gap of a few months before the flooding hit.
That is not enough time for local emergency managers to forget all of their extreme weather knowledge or miss many vital trainings, LaMarre stated.
Plus, he said, others in the forecast office who aspired to serve as WCM would likely have taken over some of Yura's responsibilities. And notably, the meteorologist-in-charge of the Austin/San Antonio office is a former WCM as well, according to Erica Grow Cei, a spokesperson for the NWS.
LaMarre said the focus of the investigation into what went so horribly wrong should largely be on the so-called 'last mile' problem of weather forecasting: communicating warnings to the people who need to receive them and making sure they act on them.
That is well within the purview of the WCM, but other meteorologists share these responsibilities, along with local officials.
For its part, NOAA touted the accuracy of its forecasts and noted its flash flood warnings were sent via tone alerts to cell phones in the areas affected, as well as to NOAA weather radios.
'The National Weather Service's Weather Forecast Offices (WFOs) in Austin/San Antonio and San Angelo, TX had additional staff on duty during the catastrophic flooding event in Texas's Hill Country during the July 4 holiday weekend,' Cei said in a statement. 'Both offices, in addition to the West Gulf River Forecast Center, had extra personnel on the night of Thursday, July 3 into the day on Friday, July 4. All forecasts and warnings were issued in a timely manner.'
'Additionally, these offices were able to provide decision support services to local partners, including those in the emergency management community,' she said. 'The NWS remains dedicated to our mission to serve the American public through our forecasts and decision support services.'