Beleaguered Weather Service defends its forecasts as Texas officials point fingers over flood warnings

CNN The forces that descended upon the Guadalupe River in Texas Hill Country on Thursday night were a worst-case scenario Four months worth of rain fell in just hours as water-laden thunderstorms stalled in place giving rise to a wall of water that surged down the river in the blackness of night limiting the number of people who could get the warnings and move to higher ground While it is worst-case the scenario is becoming more frequent as the world warms More rainfall coming faster than it ever has before with forecast models inherently biased toward what we used to consider normal For dozens of families normal was shattered Thursday morning when they woke to torrential rain and catastrophic floodwaters that have since left more than dead including children according to local officers As an intensive search continues for more than girls in Kerr County Texas who remain unaccounted for after the historic flood swept dozens from a summer camp local leaders are adamant they could not have done anything more to prevent the tragedy Rest assured no one knew this kind of flood was coming We have floods all the time Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly declared at a Friday news conference We had no reason to believe that this was going to be anything like what s happened here None whatsoever The National Weather Provision issued a series of early-morning warnings about life-threatening flooding along the river But questions remain about how multiple people those alerts reached whether critical vacancies at the forecast offices could have affected warning dissemination and if so-called warning fatigue had been growing in a region agents have described as one of the majority dangerous in the country for flash flooding The July th tragedy shares a striking resemblance with the Guadalupe River Flood The National Weather System described that flood in chillingly similar terms a wall of water coming down the Guadalupe River triggering a rise over feet The flood killed teenagers and injured others in Kerr County as a bus and van were leaving a church camp according to the National Weather Operation Focus is also narrowing in on local authorities and their systems procedures and reaction to the warnings Kerr County s judge noted the county does not have a warning system for flooding while Kerrville City manager announced they could not anticipate the severity of the flooding despite the warnings because the event happened so briskly Gov Greg Abbott and federal representatives are defending the response as rapid in the face of what they called a once-in-a-century flood There s going to be a lot of finger-pointing and a lot of second guessing and Monday morning quarterbacking revealed Texas Rep Chip Roy a Republican There s a lot of people saying why and how and I understand that I understand why parents would be asking those questions and all of the media In a press conference on Saturday Homeland Safeguard Secretary Kristi Noem defended the authorities response and the National Weather Provision in the wake of the tragic flooding When President Trump took office he mentioned he needed to fix and is currently upgrading the device And the National Weather Arrangement has indicated that with that and NOAA that we needed to renew this ancient system that has been left in place with the federal governing body for countless a multitude of years and that is the reforms that are ongoing Noem revealed A NOAA official disclosed they did not know specifically what Noem was referring to but that upgrades to agency computer networks radars and modeling systems are underway Certain of those upgrades have been taking place since before Trump took office for his second term Months of rain in just hours The National Weather Arrangement began forecasting the threat of flooding in Kerr County as early as Thursday morning with a hazardous flood outlook A flood watch was issued at p m CT that highlighted Kerrville among other locations as being at threat of flash flooding though notably as local authorities have raised the forecast was for less rainfall than what fell as much as to inches for an event that ultimately dropped as much as inches on parts of central Texas Several technical forecasts followed Thursday afternoon and evening with increasingly heightened language about the magnitude of the expected flooding At p m river forecasters were calling for locally intense rain rates that would briskly overwhelm the ground s ability to absorb the water Rapid runoff is expected with locally considerable flash and urban flash flooding feasible the nocturnal timing will also enhance the hazard foreseen and impacts the forecasters predicted They also noted the promising for a historic rainfall event though it s unclear if that messaging reached urgency managers The first warning for life-threatening flash flooding for Kerrville came at a m and was marked specifically to trigger the Exigency Alert System It would have sounded the alarm on cell phones in the warned area assuming those phones had utility and their users hadn t turned off EAS weather alerts Three hours later the Kerr County Sheriff s Office sent the first record of flooding at low-water crossings Several other critical alerts followed warning of the imminent threat A flash flood emergency warning was issued for Kerr County at a m followed by one for Kerrville at a m The raging river burst from its banks around a m sweeping homes cars campers and cabins downstream It took about minutes for the -foot flood wave to move down the Guadalupe River overnight Thursday triggering the river s second-highest crest on record Not all areas along the river have alarms to flag flooding City Manager Dalton Rice noted at a news conference Friday The alarms are typically further downstream he commented in places such as Comfort about miles southeast of Kerrville One resident Candice Taylor pushed back on suggestions residents should have been prepared for the magnitude of the flooding she informed CNN affiliate KENS Anybody who says anything like This was forecasted Why didn t you watch the news That s callous Taylor narrated KENS Solicited about why there aren t any evacuation notices the Kerrville city manager stated there s a delicate balance when calling for an evacuation between sheltering in place and getting to higher grounds Evacuations could bring chaos onto the roads and threat people getting stuck while trying to get out along with more vehicles swept away noted Rice A lot of our operations plans especially with these camps that is the plan is sometimes shelter in place get them to those known high grounds and then wait for rescue Rice reported When this came in people are sleeping even if you were able to try to get notification that evacuation period is a very delicate balance Forecast offices stretched thin The National Weather Amenity has been hard hit by personnel cuts under the Trump administration but that may not have significantly affected the forecasts and warnings for this historic and deadly flooding The two Texas NWS offices largest part closely involved in forecasting and warning about the flooding on the Guadalupe River Austin-San Antonio and San Angelo are missing a minimal key staff members but still issued a slew of watches and warnings about the flood danger to come on time Tom Fahy the legislative director for the NWS employees union narrated CNN that while there are shortages at both the NWS San Angelo forecast office and the Austin-San Antonio office both had adequate staffing and tools on Thursday night The San Angelo office is missing its meteorologist-in-charge Fahy commented as well as a senior-level hydrologist and the Austin-San Antonio office is missing its science and operations officer Perhaps majority notably the Austin-San Antonio office is short a warning coordination meteorologist a role that serves as a crucial direct link between forecasters and crisis managers Both vacancies in Austin-San Antonio were the outcome of early retirement incentives offered by the Trump administration to shrink the size of the federal establishment a NOAA official notified CNN Other NWS offices around the country are far worse off operating with such thin staffing that they no longer operate hours a day seven days a week Several NWS forecast offices have ceased launching their twice-a-day weather balloons which provide critical figures that can alert forecasters to the possible for flooding and other hazardous weather The NOAA official defended the National Weather Function forecasts and disclosed the tragedy ultimately resulted from too much rain in too short of time in one of the largest part vulnerable spots in the country for flash flooding and in the overnight hours the worst time of day to get warnings to people in harm s way This particular population is also inundated with weather watches and warnings all times of day and night in Texas Hill Country where flash flooding is triggered frequently by summertime thunderstorms warning fatigue can settle in The Kerr County tragedy also shines a spotlight on the limitations of current forecasting machinery It is solely not realizable to predict that a cluster of thunderstorms dumping months worth of rain would stall out over a specific spot And America s forecasting prowess could soon slip backwards experts warn if the Trump administration s budget proposal is enacted just as the country requirements to push the limits on what weather models are capable of The budget seeks to eliminate all of NOAA s weather and setting research labs along with institutes jointly run with universities around the country The entire research division of NOAA would be eliminated under the proposal which is subject to congressional approval This would shut down research and growth of new forecasting technologies including computer modeling and severe weather warning scenarios and hamper prediction of hazards including flash floods One of the NOAA labs slated to be shut down is the National Severe Storms Lab in Norman Oklahoma which works to improve flash flood forecasting among other hazards from severe thunderstorms The NOAA research cuts would come just as human-caused weather change is resulting in more frequent and intense downpours like the ones that led to this tragedy in Texas NOAA spokesperson Kim Doster stated CNN that the Weather Function provided ample lead time prior to the onset of flash flooding The National Weather Amenity is heartbroken by the tragic loss of life in Kerr County On July the NWS office in Austin San Antonio TX conducted forecast briefings for crisis management in the morning and issued a Flood Watch in the early afternoon Doster disclosed in a report Flash Flood Warnings were also issued on the night of July and in the early morning of July giving preliminary lead times of more than three hours before flash flooding conditions occurred Wyndham Etheridge a -year-old at Camp La Junta in Hunt Texas explained CNN s Fredricka Whitfield he woke up to people from all over the camp coming to seek refuge at his cabin They stayed there fearing the strong floodwaters could sweep them away As the water rose they climbed into the loft of their cabin to escape but it wasn t safe Etheridge explained So at specific point we just decided we could go to bed for a little bit but then we woke up again to more water he commented Etheridge s parents were among the lucky who received word that their son was safe and could be picked up All those boys were pretty traumatized mentioned Amy Etheridge Wyndham s mother For the families of the a multitude of who were taken by the floods their trauma is just beginning