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 personnel 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 announced 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 Amenity issued a series of early-morning warnings about life-threatening flooding along the river But questions remain about how a multitude of 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 personnel have described as one of the the greater part 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 Amenity Focus is also narrowing in on local authorities and their systems procedures and reaction to the warnings Kerr County s judge announced the county does not have a warning system for flooding while Kerrville City manager reported they could not anticipate the severity of the flooding despite the warnings because the event happened so rapidly Gov Greg Abbott and federal executives 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 announced 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 Safety Secretary Kristi Noem defended the ruling body response and the National Weather Operation in the wake of the tragic flooding When President Trump took office he mentioned he needed to fix and is as of now upgrading the instrument And the National Weather Utility has indicated that with that and NOAA that we needed to renew this ancient system that has been left in place with the federal leadership for a multitude of a multitude of years and that is the reforms that are ongoing Noem commented A NOAA official mentioned they did not know specifically what Noem was referring to but that upgrades to agency computer networks radars and modeling systems are underway Several 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 Facility 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 peril of flash flooding though notably as local agents 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 probable flooding At p m river forecasters were calling for locally intense rain rates that would fast overwhelm the ground s ability to absorb the water Rapid runoff is expected with locally considerable flash and urban flash flooding attainable the nocturnal timing will also enhance the hazard expected 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 Urgency Alert System It would have sounded the alarm on cell phones in the warned area assuming those phones had arrangement and their users hadn t turned off EAS weather alerts Three hours later the Kerr County Sheriff s Office sent the first document of flooding at low-water crossings Several other critical alerts followed warning of the imminent threat A flash flood crisis 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 mentioned at a news conference Friday The alarms are typically further downstream he noted 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 recounted CNN affiliate KENS Anybody who says anything like This was forecasted Why didn t you watch the news That s callous Taylor advised KENS Sought about why there aren t any evacuation notices the Kerrville city manager mentioned 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 vulnerability people getting stuck while trying to get out along with more vehicles swept away revealed 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 Operation 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 bulk closely involved in forecasting and warning about the flooding on the Guadalupe River Austin-San Antonio and San Angelo are missing a scant 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 explained 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 guidance on Thursday night The San Angelo office is missing its meteorologist-in-charge Fahy declared as well as a senior-level hydrologist and the Austin-San Antonio office is missing its science and operations officer Perhaps the 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 urgency managers Both vacancies in Austin-San Antonio were the impact of early retirement incentives offered by the Trump administration to shrink the size of the federal cabinet 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 Multiple NWS forecast offices have ceased launching their twice-a-day weather balloons which provide critical figures that can alert forecasters to the prospective for flooding and other hazardous weather The NOAA official defended the National Weather Arrangement forecasts and reported the accident ultimately resulted from too much rain in too short of time in one of the the majority 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 equipment It is entirely not attainable 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 necessities to push the limits on what weather models are capable of The budget seeks to eliminate all of NOAA s weather and environment 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 advancement 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 narrated CNN that the Weather Provision provided ample lead time prior to the onset of flash flooding The National Weather Organization 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 emergency management in the morning and issued a Flood Watch in the early afternoon Doster revealed in a announcement 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 informed 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 noted 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 disclosed Amy Etheridge Wyndham s mother For the families of the a large number of who were taken by the floods their trauma is just beginning