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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.

  • KnitWit@lemmy.worldEnglish
    87·
    1 day 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.worldEnglish
      7·
      19 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.caOPEnglish
      12·
      1 day 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.worldEnglish
        82·
        23 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.worldEnglish
      201·
      1 day ago

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