Texas Officials Question Weather Service Warning Amid Floods

Time​ Magazine

4 hours ago

Texan communities are dealing with the impact of the deadly flash floods along the Guadalupe River, which have killed at least 67 people so far. Search and rescue efforts continue for those unaccounted for, including girls from the Camp Mystic summer camp, which Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said was "horrendously ravaged' by the flood waters.
As authorities and locals assembled to deal with the impact, some Texas officials raised concerns about the warnings they received from the National Weather Service (NWS), saying the predictions had underestimated the incoming rainfall and did not adequately prepare local authorities for what was to come.
Texas Division of Emergency Management chief Nim Kidd told reporters at a press conference on Friday that NWS advisories and forecasts 'did not predict the amount of rain we saw.'
When asked about the severity of the warnings he did see, Kidd said: 'The original forecast that we received Wednesday from the National Weather Service predicted 3-6 inches of rain in the Concho Valley and 4-8 inches in the Hill Country. The amount of rain that fell at this specific location was never in any of those forecasts.'
Kidd was not the only Texas official to call into question the weather notices. Dalton Rice, the city manager for Kerrville, said it 'dumped more rain than what was forecast.'
Meanwhile, Kerr County judge Rob Kelly told reporters: 'We didn't know this flood was coming. Rest assured, no one knew this kind of flood was coming. We have floods all the time… when it rains, we get water. We had no reason to believe that this was going to be anything like what's happened here. None whatsoever.' Kelly also said he did not know what kind of warning, if any, the leaders at Camp Mystic would have received ahead of the flash floods.
Read More: Rescuers Search for Girls From Texas Camp as Flooding Death Toll Rises
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which houses the NWS, is among the agencies that have experienced mass layoffs under the Trump Administration, with firings of probationary employees starting just weeks after Trump returned to the White House.In May, the former directors of the NWS published an open letter to 'the American people,' warning that Trump's cuts leave 'the nation's official weather forecasting entity at a significant deficit—down more than 10% of its staffing—just as we head into the busiest time for severe storm predictions like tornadoes and hurricanes.'
The authors of the letter highlighted their fears, saying: 'Our worst nightmare is that weather forecast offices will be so understaffed that there will be needless loss of life. We know that's a nightmare shared by those on the forecasting front lines—and by the people who depend on their efforts.'
Rick Spinrad, the former administrator of NOAA, has addressed the current concerns, saying that while many of the weather forecast offices are not currently operating with a full staff, it's too soon to tell if that impacted how the floods were forecast and dealt with."A lot of the weather forecast offices now are not operating at full complement of staff, which means that you're really putting an extra burden on these folks. I don't know how much that was a factor in what happened in Texas this weekend," he said on Saturday.
"Without research, without staff to do the work, we can assume that the predictions, and not just hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, drought, wildfires, tsunamis, for that matter, are undoubtedly going to degrade. And that means that people's ability to prepare for these storms will be compromised."
The NWS San Antonio office on Monday predicted a potential for 'downpours' and heavy rain, which then escalated to a forecast of up to 7 inches of rainfall in isolated areas. On Thursday, the office issued a broad flood watch for parts of south-central Texas, including Kerr County, though the most severe warnings started when the NWS issued a 'life-threatening flash flooding' warning in Kerrville at 1:14 a.m. local time on Friday. The alert triggered the Emergency Alert System, which would have sounded the alarm on cell phones throughout the area, providing people had service and had not turned off their emergency alerts. The alert was issued roughly three hours before the first reports of flooding came in.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem joined Gov. Abbott at a press conference on Saturday afternoon, where she defended the agency against suggestions that its warnings fell short, but also said that Trump is currently overseeing an upgrade of the technology used to deliver weather alerts to the public. 'We know everybody wants more warning time and that's why we're working to update the technology that has been neglected for far too long,' she said.
Meanwhile, meteorologists have said the NWS did all it could in regards to the forecasts issued prior to the floods.
On Saturday, meteorologist John Morales took to social media to defend the NWS, stating that the local officials 'blaming NWS are wrong.'
'I don't see any evidence that cuts to NOAA/NWS caused any degradation in the anticipatory weather warnings ahead of this Texas tragedy,' Morales said, sharing data from the NWS.
Morales later said that while nothing more could have been done prior to the flooding, he is of the opinion that unfilled positions at the NWS San Antonio station—some impacted by DOGE-driven cuts and others pre-dating Trump's second term—could have impacted the NWS' ability to effectively coordinate with local officials after the floods struck.
'The relationship between emergency managers, media, and [the] NWS is cultivated over years. It is a three-legged stool that can age well as long as it's maintained with good comms and practice,' Morales said. 'Having NWS managers—Meteorologist in Charge, Warning Coordination Meteorologist, and Science Operations Officer—missing would break the stool, but slowly.'
TIME has reached out to the National Weather Service for comment.
Read More: Mass Layoffs at NOAA Spark Concerns Over Weather, Climate Research
Other meteorologists have also come out and said that the NWS did all it could have done prior to the floods.
Meteorologist Chris Vagasky told Wired that it is incredibly difficult for a meteorologist to actually say how much rainfall will occur.
'The signal was out there that this is going to be a heavy, significant rainfall event,' Vagasky said. 'But pinpointing exactly where that's going to fall? You can't do that.'
While meteorologist sensed a weather event of some sort was on the horizon, the timing of the flash flood warnings left people with little time to act.
In a press conference on Sunday morning, Kerrville City manager Rice was asked about why summer camps were not evacuated, despite the warning days earlier that a storm could occur.
In response, Rice said: 'That, that is a great question, but again, we want to make sure that we continue to focus. We still have 11 missing children that we want to get reunited with our families.'