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 administrators 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 revealed 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 Facility issued a series of early-morning warnings about life-threatening flooding along the river But questions remain about how a large number 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 officers 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 Utility 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 functionaries and their systems procedures and reaction to the warnings Kerr County s judge mentioned the county does not have a warning system for flooding while Kerrville City manager commented they could not anticipate the severity of the flooding despite the warnings because the event happened so fleetly Gov Greg Abbott and federal bureaucrats 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 Safety Secretary Kristi Noem defended the cabinet response and the National Weather System in the wake of the tragic flooding When President Trump took office he declared he yearned to fix and is at present upgrading the device And the National Weather Function has indicated that with that and NOAA that we needed to renew this ancient system that has been left in place with the federal ruling body for a large number of a great number of years and that is the reforms that are ongoing Noem stated 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 A few 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 Amenity 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 danger of flash flooding though notably as local bureaucrats 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 achievable the nocturnal timing will also enhance the hazard likely and impacts the forecasters predicted They also noted the prospective for a historic rainfall event though it s unclear if that messaging reached emergency 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 provision and their users hadn t turned off EAS weather alerts Three hours later the Kerr County Sheriff s Office sent the first statement of flooding at low-water crossings Several other critical alerts followed warning of the imminent threat A flash flood exigency 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 reported 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 explained CNN affiliate KENS Anybody who says anything like This was forecasted Why didn t you watch the news That s callous Taylor advised KENS Appealed about why there aren t any evacuation notices the Kerrville city manager declared 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 menace people getting stuck while trying to get out along with more vehicles swept away stated 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 declared 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 Institution 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 most of closely involved in forecasting and warning about the flooding on the Guadalupe River Austin-San Antonio and San Angelo are missing a sparse 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 advised 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 support on Thursday night The San Angelo office is missing its meteorologist-in-charge Fahy disclosed as well as a senior-level hydrologist and the Austin-San Antonio office is missing its science and operations officer Perhaps majority of notably the Austin-San Antonio office is short a warning coordination meteorologist a role that serves as a crucial direct link between forecasters and exigency managers Both vacancies in Austin-San Antonio were the effect of early retirement incentives offered by the Trump administration to shrink the size of the federal governing body a NOAA official reported 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 A large number of NWS forecast offices have ceased launching their twice-a-day weather balloons which provide critical facts that can alert forecasters to the prospective for flooding and other hazardous weather The NOAA official defended the National Weather Facility forecasts and explained the catastrophe ultimately resulted from too much rain in too short of time in one of the greater 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 practicable 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 demands to push the limits on what weather models are capable of The budget seeks to eliminate all of NOAA s weather and state 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 setting change is resulting in more frequent and intense downpours like the ones that led to this tragedy in Texas NOAA spokesperson Kim Doster notified CNN that the Weather Function provided ample lead time prior to the onset of flash flooding The National Weather Function 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 disclosed in a declaration 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 announced 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 stated 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 announced Amy Etheridge Wyndham s mother For the families of the multiple who were taken by the floods their trauma is just beginning