Officials in Texas are casting blame on the National Weather Service (NWS) for failing to forecast catastrophic flooding that has killed 24 people.

NWS was among the government agencies targeted by the Trump administration in its effort to gut the federal bureaucracy, losing approximately 600 staffers.

After the cuts, the agency—which was already understaffed—began to prepare to offer “degraded” forecasting services, facing “severe shortages” of meteorologists, according to an internal document obtained by The New York Times in April.

  • ProfThadBach@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    17
    ·
    8 hours ago

    All this was in Project 2025. We were shouting it from every fucking mountain top. I posted to multiple times to my Facebook. I texted it to all my friends. I begged them to read it to know what would happen if the GOP and Trump got in office. The only response I got from any of them them was from one dude I grew up with who said, " what about the babies." Well there are 23 little girls gone because they got no warning. What about those babies? Oh that is right, they were already born so they don’t count.

  • Scotty_Trees@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    ·
    11 hours ago

    Honestly, one of the best independent news from Texas is the Texas Tribune, fully funded by it’s readers and not owned by a billionaire. Been following them for a few years (don’t even live in Texas, but it’s good to know what their GOP is doing because their policies could always spread), and have found their reporting to be excellent. Please give them a try. Also fuck Cruz and Abbot and the GOP in general…

    https://www.texastribune.org/

  • Kate-ay@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    50
    ·
    22 hours ago

    The forecast was good. Don’t spread misinformation and let Texas officials off the hook for not evacuating the area.

  • KnitWit@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    83
    ·
    24 hours ago

    Don’t fall for it. While the NWS is definitely being gutted, there was nothing wrong with their reporting. They issued proper preliminary reports and warnings leading up to the tragic event. This wasn’t an issue of not being forewarned, it was an issue of a river rising over twenty feet in a rapid timeframe. These officials are once again denigrating scientists, and not once did they mention increasing funding for these services.

    • facelessbs@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      8 hours ago

      I read in one of the recent articles that there was plans to put in a sirens for flooding because it was so common on that particular river but it was struck down because of cost.

    • mysticpickle@lemmy.caOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      14 hours ago

      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.

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

      • KnitWit@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        12 hours ago

        That’s not a part of this article… this article starts with the first paragraph, followed in paragraph 3 and five, which all do more to disparage the forecast than mention an uthing about lack of dissemination (who the person you’re quite would be referring to. This is another hit piece disguised as something else.

        Officials in Texas are casting blame on the National Weather Service (NWS) for failing to forecast catastrophic flooding that has killed 24 people…

        “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,” said Texas Emergency Management Chief W. Nim Kidd at a press conference Friday. “The amount of rain that fell at this specific location was never in any of those forecasts.”…

        Dalton Rice, the city manager for Kerrville, Texas—who also spoke at the press conference—said that the catastrophic flash flooding happened because the skies “dumped more rain than what was forecasted” on two of the river’s forks….

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      19
      ·
      23 hours ago

      Suspected as much. NOAA and the NWS aren’t falling off a cliff this fast. They’ll get there!

  • snooggums@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    88
    ·
    1 day ago

    That was faster than expected.

    Unfortunately, being Texas I don’t know if they are suing to restore the NWS or use this as an excuse to get rid of it altogether since the article doesn’t clarify their desired outcome.

      • leadore@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        11
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        22 hours ago

        Everything trump and republicans have been doing is with the goal to privatize as much of the government as possible, to funnel taxpayer money directly into private pockets. The oligarchs want that money! They hate seeing it spent on the poors.

        They want to decimate agencies until they can’t function, then use their inability to provide adequate services as the excuse to privatize, then either pay twice as much taxpayer money for the same or worse service from for-profit companies, or in some cases get rid of the services and let people fend for themselves.

    • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      edit-2
      1 day ago

      I’ve been following the NOAA situation and I don’t think this was fast in the slightest. Trump and DOGE went through there like a hurricane.

    • ganksy@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      24 hours ago

      I think the “Trump lead NWS” was implied. They hate science and weather people. Probably were still working for Obama anyway.

  • BigMacHole@sopuli.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    40
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 day ago

    Who CARES if Trump just KILLED a bunch of Kids in Texas in an EXTREMELY PREDICTABLE way! These are REPUBLICANS! When have REPUBLICANS EVER done Anything to Help Children?

  • Lucky_777@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    23 hours ago

    Ohhhhh. Some harsh words Trump and his ilk don’t care about. These Texas Republicans will just fall in line as usual. Just like the Republican senators did. Fuck Republicans.