https://www.kxan.com/investigations/federal-forecast-concerns-surface-in-texas-deadly-flooding-debate/

KERR COUNTY, Texas (KXAN) — State and local officials are calling out federal forecasters amid deadly flooding in the Texas Hill Country over the extended Fourth of July weekend. The criticism comes, as funding cuts and staff shortages plague the National Weather Service and other emergency management agencies nationwide.

Texas Department of Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd told reporters Friday original forecasts from the National Weather Service predicted 4 to 8 inches of rain in that area, “but the amount of rain that fell in this specific location was never in any of those forecasts.”

“Listen, everybody got the forecast from the National Weather Service, right?” Kidd said. “You all got it, you’re all in media, you got that forecast. It did not predict the amount of rain that we saw.”

Kidd added TDEM “worked with our own meteorologist to finetune that weather statement” but did not elaborate on any updated interpretation that would have led to more urgent warnings for evacuations.

The area actually received a much more significant amount of rain that night, with NWS observed totals exceeding 10 inches just west of Kerrville, near where dozens were killed or remain missing – including several children at a summer camp.

Localized LCRA rainfall totals in the region have exceeded 18 inches in some places.

The Guadalupe River in Kerrville measured just under a foot on Thursday, leading up to midnight. At about 4 a.m. Friday, the river rose over 30 feet in less than two hours, according USGS data.

Critical communication

On Friday, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick also said during a separate press event that TDEM Region 6 Assistant Chief Jay Hall “personally contacted the judges and mayors in that area and notified them all of potential flooding.” KXAN has requested record of that communication to verify that statement and its level of urgency.

“Yesterday morning, the message was sent,” Patrick added. “It is up to the local counties and mayors under the law to evacuate if they feel a need. That information was passed along.”

NWS issued a flash flood warning at 1:14 a.m. Friday for a portion of Kerr County – where the majority of flood-related deaths have been reported. But it would be at least four hours before any county or city government entity posted directions to evacuate on social media.

City and county officials have yet to fully explain the timing of their Facebook posts surrounding the height of the flood or other ways they might have notified people near the water. Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring, Jr., said Saturday the city had done an “admirable” job making sure all information was available to the public. KXAN is awaiting responses after requesting records of communication between city, county and state officials to better understand decisions regarding their public warnings.

Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly has claimed officials “didn’t know this flood was coming.”

“This is the most dangerous river valley in the United States, and we deal with floods on a regular basis – when it rains, we get water,” Kelly said to reporters Friday. “We had no reason to believe this was going to be anything like what has happened here, none whatsoever.”

Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice reiterated that apparent lack of awareness, telling the media Friday: “This rain event sat on top of that and dumped more rain than what was forecasted.”

KXAN also requested additional comments from Kidd and from NWS Austin/San Antonio Meteorologist in Charge Pat Vesper regarding how recent federal funding cuts might have impacted weather forecasting abilities in Texas. Kidd has not responded, and an NWS spokesperson said Vesper’s office “is focused on forecast operations right now, as flash flooding is ongoing.”

NWS staffing concerns

While state and local officials have not publicly – nor outright – blamed the Trump Administration’s financial decisions for any possible forecasting issues, public accusations on social media and elsewhere point to their timing during severe weather season.

For instance, directly under Vesper at the local NWS office is a key position – warning coordination meteorologist (WCM) – that has remained vacant since April. The role was most recently held by longtime employee Paul Yura, who took an early retirement package offered to agency workers as the administration worked to reduce the budget and personnel number at the NWS and its parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Yura, who KXAN recently reported spent more than half of his 32-year career at the local NWS office, gained tremendous experience understanding local weather patterns while ensuring timely warnings get disseminated to the public in a multitude of ways. The importance of his role as WCM cannot be understated.

Ensuring ample and timely warning to Central Texas counties was among the chief responsibilities. According to NOAA, “The WCM coordinates the warning function of the office with the outside world. This would include heading the Skywarn Program, conducting spotter training and being a voice to the local media for the office.”

Following the Kerr County flood, KXAN reached out to Yura – who referenced a hiring freeze in his retirement message to the media – but he referred questions to an NWS public affairs official.

Along with Yura’s job, five other vacancies in the local NWS office have stacked up, according to its online staff roster and the NWS Employees Organization. Those include two meteorologists, two technology staff members and a science officer. The office has 26 employees when fully staffed.
Federal funding and staff cuts

The administration made cuts to the federal workforce an early priority in Trump’s second presidential term this year, and those reductions extended to the NWS.

In May, NBC News reported the agency was working to shuffle employees to cover 150 positions that were vacated by the firings of probationary employees and early retirements of other longtime workers.

Some forecasting offices were left without overnight service, though no Texas offices were mentioned among those.

Tom Fahy, the NWSEO legislative director, then told NBC the staff cuts could increase risk and damage the agency’s ability to respond to a disaster.

Fahy told KXAN on Saturday the Central Texas flooding “was indeed a flash precipitation event,” leading to massive rainfall – something the local NWS office still had “adequate staffing and resources” to handle, despite its vacancies.

“They issued timely forecasts and warnings leading up to the storm,” he said, also referencing flood watches “out well in advance” the day before the waters rose.

In early June, the NWS was seeking to hire at least 126 people across the country, including meteorologists, following previous staff cuts, The Hill reported. A NOAA spokesperson told the outlet the NWS would be conducting “short term temporary duty assignments” and providing “reassignment opportunity notices” to fill field offices with the “greatest operational needs.”

The NWS Austin/San Antonio Weather Forecast Office currently has a 15% vacancy rate for meteorologists. The office’s total vacancy rate was 12% at the beginning of the year, but that increased to 23% by the end of April when employees took buyouts, Fahy confirmed to KXAN.
Federal officials visiting

President Trump posted on Truth Social he is “working with State and Local Officials on the ground in Texas in response to the tragic flooding,” ahead of U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visit to represent the administration in Kerrville Saturday.

During a press conference after surveying the area, Noem told reporters the amount of rain in this flooding event was “unprecedented,” underscoring the reason Trump is working to “fix” aging technology within NOAA.

“I do carry your concerns back to the federal government and back to President Trump,” she said, acknowledging the need for upgraded technology to give “families have as much warning as possible.”
Central Texas flooding

Central Texas and the Hill Country are broadly known for major floods. With one of the highest risks for flash flooding in the country, the area has earned the nickname “flash flood alley,” according to LCRA.

This weekend’s tragedy isn’t the first.

In 1987, a flood hit the Guadalupe River, pushing the waterway up 29 feet and catching a church camp bus, according to the NWS. The bus, which was being used to evacuate dozens of children, was swept away and 10 children were killed.

Again, in 1998, flooding struck the region. On Oct. 17 and 18 that year a storm dropped roughly 30 inches of rain near San Marcos. Homes along the Guadalupe River near Canyon Lake and down to Seguin were washed off their foundations, NWS reported.


https://www.nbcdfw.com/weather/weather-connection/pitch-black-wall-of-death-hill-country-flood-survivor-describes-wave-of-water/3878483/

In Ingram, Texas, Erin Burgess woke to thunder and rain at 3:30 a.m. Friday.

Just 20 minutes later, water was pouring into her home directly across from the river, she said. She described an agonizing hour clinging to a tree and waiting for the water to recede enough so they could walk up the hill to a neighbor's home.

“My son and I floated to a tree where we hung onto it, and my boyfriend and my dog floated away. He was lost for a while, but we found them,” she said.

Of her 19-year-old son, Burgess said: “Thankfully, he’s over 6 feet tall. That’s the only thing that saved me was hanging on to him.”

Matthew Stone, 44, of Kerrville, said police came knocking on doors at 5:30 a.m. but that he had received no warning on his phone.

“We got no emergency alert. There was nothing," Stone said. Then: "a pitch black wall of death.”

Stone said police used his paddle boat to help rescue a neighbor. Stone said he and the rescuers thought they heard someone yelling “Help!” from the water but couldn't see anyone.

At a reunification center set up in Ingram, families cried and cheered as loved ones got off vehicles loaded with evacuees. Two soldiers carried an older woman who could not get down a ladder. Behind her, a woman in a soiled T-shirt and shorts clutched a small white dog.

Later, a girl in a white “Camp Mystic” T-shirt arrived. Standing in white socks in a puddle, she sobbed in her mother’s arms.
___

>NWS
Isn't that that Commie bullshit Trump cut?

>>1418331
It was basically just climate change cult getting federal gibs to do absolutely nothing

>>1418332
How many years of Koch Brothers indoctrination does it take to actually believe this?

>>1418322 (OP)
NWS are a bunch of bums. FIRE ALL OF THEM. Our tax dollars shouldn't be going to a bunch of climate cultists. Let the free market handle the weather. There are 100 private companies who could do this job 100 times better.

Wait, what happened to the weather machines? Now that Biden has been given the boot and the Dems are dying, shouldn't he have control of it by now? Are they just hiding it? If they are, Trump's number one effort should be about acquiring this powerful device so that tragedies like this can no longer happen.

>>1418322 (OP)
>defund and downsize NWS
>NWS does worse
>"Clearly this is the fault of the NWS!"
It'd be funny if it wasn't so predictable. And if it wasn't fucking killing people, but you know.

>>1418338
Just what we need: a profit-oriented middleman to handle weather forecasting and alerts.

>>1418341
What happens when your monthly subscription isn't renewed?

>>1418339
Perhaps Trump already has control of the machine and this is his handiwork.

>>1418342
The free market happens.

>>1418338
>There are 100 private companies who could do this job 100 times better.
https://theconversation.com/noaas-vast-public-weather-data-powers-the-local-forecasts-on-your-phone-and-tv-a-private-company-alone-couldnt-match-it-249451
>A lot of the weather information Americans rely on starts with real-time data collected by NOAA satellites, airplanes, weather balloons, radar and maritime buoys, as well as weather stations around the world.

>All of that information goes into the agency’s computers, which process the data to begin defining what’s going on in different parts of the atmosphere.

>NOAA forecasters use computer models that simulate physics and the behavior of the atmosphere, along with their own experience and local knowledge, to start to paint a picture of the weather – what’s coming in a few minutes or hours or days. They also use that data to project seasonal conditions out over weeks or months.
No private company can do that. In fact, every private weather forecasting company relies on free access to NOAA's satellite data.

https://www.cnn.com/weather/live-news/texas-flooding-07-05-2025-hnk

>Here's the latest

>• Search widens: Authorities are still racing to find victims of yesterday’s flash flooding in central Texas, including 27 people from Camp Mystic, a girls’ summer camp in Kerr County. Gov. Greg Abbott said the state’s focus remains on a “relentless” search for survivors as floodwaters recede in some areas.

>• Rising death toll: At least 50 people, including 15 children, have died in the flooding, according to local officials. The families of four campers have confirmed their deaths to CNN, while others are enduring an excruciating wait for news on their children.

>• Federal response: The Trump administration will honor a federal disaster declaration signed by Abbott to help direct relief to Texas, after the president denied some other requests this year and has sought to shift the burden of disaster response onto states.

>>1418344
Can't wait until cannibalism hits the free market, companies can herd off folks and process them.

tRump Kills more Americans than Net & Ya-Hoo kills Palestinians

>>1418350
>sell satellites and stations to private market to recoup some of the losses from years of government waste
>corporations now manage satellites
>efficiency skyrockets, costs drop, consumers get better weather information

And plenty of private companies can. What do you think Starlink and Spacex are?

>>1418367
>the free market can run anything better than the government can
Where does this meme come from? When people's lives are on the line, essential services should not be entrusted to the profit-motivated free market.

>>1418367
>costs drop
Can you name a single fucking time something was privatized and costs dropped or services weren't impacted.

A single fucking time. One time. Once.

There is literally no fucking reason for a for profit company to lower prices from what people are already paying for an inelastic good/service. That would fucking defy basic economic theory. Supply and demand do not fucking work that way. Even if the company could do shit more efficiently, and that's a big if, they would just pocket the profits, and they would have every motive in the world to raise prices if they can on top of that.

Companies do not pass savings onto consumers. They never have and they never will.

>>1418372
>Where does this meme come from?
Private companies.

>>1418374
Not him, but prices usually drop, at first (typically, the government places some price controls for the first few years to onboard voters). Then they're gradually jacked up as services are enshittified.

>>1418374
>Can you name a single fucking time something was privatized and costs dropped or services weren't impacted.
Grocery stores after the fall of the USSR.

>>1418381
Objectively incorrect. Immediately after the fall and for several years onward, prices increased and food availability decreased.

>>1418382
Grocery stores were empty during the USSR. How much worse did it really get?

>>1418383
>Grocery stores were empty during the USSR.
No they weren't. Americans have been huffing too much of their own propaganda and now completely believe lies told about an era they weren't even alive for. Actual dying empire shit.

>>1418386
>they weren't even alive for
I know people who visited moscow in 91. They said if they wanted bread they had to go to the kitchens of empty grocery stores to get bread, meat and water in back-alley deals.
You wanna be retarded and say Russian propaganda? Go ahead.

>>1418387
The USSR fell that year, anon.

>>1418383
>How much worse did it really get?
Worse. Remember the central government was coordinating production and dispensing of food and those systems fell apart, to say nothing of the disruption in production and trade between the then independent portions of the USSR.

>>1418375
>Where does this meme come from?
>Private companies.
>who is making private companies richer: Trump
>who is making those who aren't rich poorer: Trump. And who voted for that to happen to them: poorfag MAGAt cultists
The right can never meme

>>1418374
Grocery stores already took advantage of Trump tax cuts by increasing the normal.price so the new tax keeps the price the dame. So much about trickle down...

It's raining again, it never usually rains at this time of year

>>1418339
MJT is on it. Florida has already passed laws against weather machines as well.

https://www.newsweek.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-weather-modification-bill-2095076

>>1418322 (OP)
I wonder if the total fatalities is people that didn't evacuate or victims of FEMA/ICE cleaning out their camps...

>>1418339
>>1418440
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding

>>1418387
>kitchens of empty grocery stores
>in back-alley
poetry or idiocy?

>>1418340
those people weren't going to be saved regardless of whether or not one (among countless) glownigger controlled sanctum crashed to absolute zero, stayed exactly as is, or received unholy levels of funding from the council of 300 themselves. spics and non whites in general already have brains of mush to start with

>>1418367
>it's waste when an essential service run by the government uses too many paperclips
>it's not waste when an essential service run by a corporation throws hundreds of millions of dollars at their executives

Texas voted Trump, Texas paid the price of their decision. We call it TUGO. Cry me a river.

>>1418367
Working great with healthcare. Oh wait, private equity companies are buying up hospitals, loading them with debt, then they’re having to close and can’t serve their communities anymore.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna164497

>>1418367
Fuck off elon

>>1418367
Your argument is to list corporate welfare queens?

>>1418508
>corporate welfare queens
Which is what the likes of Elongated Muskrat are, sure, or she would refuse government gibs and fund everything herself

I can understand why wealthy people who have influence over government would want to defund public education, public spaces, unemployment, medicare/medicaid, etc. They don't use or need those things.

I cannot understand why wealthy people who have influence over government would want to defund weather & geological phenomena analysis, prediction, and alert systems. You'd have to be some sort of massive dullard. Tsunamis, volcanoes, avalanches, and tropical systems will fucking kill you on your resort or on your yacht, and you'd literally spend billions a year trying to successfully monitor all those things on your own dime.

In related news, the billionaire owners of the Kansas City Chiefs lost a family member at that camp in Texas.

>>1418511
Weather satellites show that climate change is real, and we can't have that. Or something.
I don't know. They're not very smart.

>>1418511
It's very simple. It is impossible to have government employees that care about weather but not climate and government employees carrying about climate is a messaging if not administrative liability for large portions of the economic elite.

Also part of monitoring weather invariably involves studying climate and how it is changing and tracking those changes over time and even if you tried to bury that shit, it would be subject to FOIA.

The minimal increase in risks to the older wealthy (and all the dead people produced as collateral) is worth it for their bottom line. You won't really see the elites give a shit about saving lives until they realize building bunker mansions in hawaii built to sustain hits from hurricanes and tsunamis won't really save them from riots the younger generations of elites will be in the middle of as we see mass climate migration. And probably not even then from the dumber elites. Lord knows inheriting wealth hardly makes you a genius.

>exact same weather services provided despite staffing reduction
>forecast has normal accuracy
>no evidence flooding warning was delayed
>no evidence that the summer camp would have reacted any differently
You retards are seething over an unsupported theory.

>>1418514
Tell it to the Texas lawmakers who think the NWS shafted them.

>>1418514
>the girls would have died anyway
Cope is rolling in on schedule

https://www.npr.org/sections/the-picture-show/2025/07/06/g-s1-76298/video-timelapse-texas-llano-river-flood-minutes

>>1418569
>>1418547
>NWS puts out alert on radio and cellphones at 1am
>local officials message at 5am
>retards arguing the NWS fucked up because some mayor didn't tweet on myspace

>>1418606
>Texas Department of Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd told reporters Friday original forecasts from the National Weather Service predicted 4 to 8 inches of rain in that area, “but the amount of rain that fell in this specific location was never in any of those forecasts.”

>“Listen, everybody got the forecast from the National Weather Service, right?” Kidd said. “You all got it, you’re all in media, you got that forecast. It did not predict the amount of rain that we saw.”

And some still did not repent

A weather radar was deliberately vandalized and briefly went offline in Oklahoma City over this weekend as well. While it has no bearing on what's happened in Texas, it does raise some suspicion about whether or not there might have been something similar going on. There was an article some time ago about Veterans on Patrol recruiting for "penetration drills" to sabotage radars, but considering their primary activities are in alignment with current administration policies there could be a degree of trying to place the blame elsewhere.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/05/07/anti-government-weather-radar-conspiracy/
https://www.news9.com/story/686c1415dfc52927077f9d5c/vandal-disables-power-to-lifesaving-news-9-weather-radar

>>1418406
remember when leftists demanded we shut down the economy so you could put small businesses out of business and give megacorporations a larger market share and send tech stocks skyrocketing?
Remember when you cried about Trump wanting to restrict immigration because then the corporations would have to pay better wages?

>>1418467
A back-alley deal doesn't mean you're in a literal alley you fucking Zoomer

>>1418759
Must you always vomit up your elaborate headcanon on this board?

>>1418759
>remember when leftists demanded we shut down the economy so you could put small businesses out of business and give megacorporations a larger market share and send tech stocks skyrocketing?
rightists pretending to dislike megacorpos getting more wealthier and powerful is always funny to see ngl

Any chance any of you guys know where one would find a list of all the missing/confirmed dead people?
I've scoured everywhere on the net, but my google-fu is weak, all I find is a handful of names and vague articles.
I'm trying to find a friend that stopped responding during the time the Texas flood happened, any help would be appreciated.

>>1419116
https://www.face_______________ book.com/therobbieharvey/posts/texas-floods-updated-list-of-those-who-arewere-missing/775155051751413/

>>1419143
Seen that, but the information is all over the place.

I'm worried about my internet friend, and I barely have the information to identify her.