Hurricanes, Floods, Wildfires, and Tornado Season Without FEMA

This is a more of a typical Texas official casting blames elsewhere.

 

Who's fault is it that 40% of the staff at the local office was laid off? Who cut their budget by 60%. Half of the Houston office is vacant due to DOGE cuts

 

I’m not gonna lie, their belief in weather manipulation is pretty funny

Trump is the president, how come he’s not using the PS5 controller to control the weather like Biden was doing?

 

Those are short-sighted and very problematic, but that does NOT automatically mean the NWS was at fault here.

I’ve seen no such data, but I’ve seen local Texas officials behavior long enough to assume they are pushing blame elsewhere, and so quickly.

 

nothing MAGAts do is for the benefit of the American people

matter of fact, they actively seek to cause chaos, death, and destruction…and they are very successful in doing so

 

They warned us last month

 

Cell alerts were issued. It is not a surprise that someone like Noem doens't know what she's talking about.

https://www.texastribune.org/2025/07/05/texas-hill-country-floods-warning-forecast-nws/

All NWS flash flood warnings, including the one issued after midnight on Friday, trigger Wireless Emergency Alerts, the emergency push notification sent through cellphone towers to all wireless phones in the emergency area, Fogarty said. That warning was updated nine times throughout Friday, each of which triggered separate alerts through the Emergency Alert System and the Wireless Emergency Alerts, Fogarty said.

 

It goes deeper than just weather modification they need to investigate the magnets on the rims. No way the Rockets shoot that bad.

 

Wait until she learns about biological control agents.

 

the state of the hardware has been an issue for a decade.

what to do about it in June 2025 falls on the admin in charge. Hence, the 'oh ****' push back a month.

 

You're telling me you can travel to Yosemite but you can't take 2 hours out of your day to get an ID once every 10 years?

This is isn't an argument. Everyone capable of traveling needs an ID. Maybe have a home service that comes to a person's home to take the ID picture of senior citizens, but if you are healthy enough to travel, you're healthy enough to take this minor step once every 10-15 years.

 

You're not providing any facts or links

Just incel rage

Biden had 4 years to do it but preferred to spend on everything but American safety

It's clear there's no direct correlation between DOGE and this event but you're using the deaths of civilians as a way to rage against the admin

 

we are not talking about the hill country floods. this is a discussion about hurricane tracking from a week ago.

 

I thought this had to be a parody, but they are serious.
Don't believe pumping tons of CO2 into the air causes climate change.
Do believe that Bill Gates and the Jews have space laser that control the weather.

 

that’s what makes it so funny to me…you’d think they’re just trolling, but nah, they’re dead serious

they also believe that Biden and the Democrats managed to rig the election in 2020 while Trump and his cronies were still in power, then decided to pass on doing so in 2024 and allow Trump to win even tho it should’ve been easier than ever for them to rig the election a 2nd time

I swear if u did a brain MRI on a MAGAt, all you’d see on imaging is a raw piece of chicken breast floating around in empty space…these are genuinely the dumbest people to ever walk the earth

 

A few things:

Flood events, particularly in the Hill Country, are really difficult to predict. Just being off by an inch or two or a few miles can create vastly different outcomes.

The stalling event that created the flooding is exceptionally hard to predict with specificity.

The best thing to do for these kinds of events is to fully fund NOAA/NWS science and research to help develop better forecast tools. We've zeroed those out because we don't want to hear about climate change. Like much of government research, that will not be done by private business.

Much of the work of disaster response is done on "blue sky" days before the disaster. That's when you coordinate with all the relevant agencies, make sure your communications lines are open, develop relationships so trust is not an issue when the crisis comes, and develop plans for evacs and response. Every NWS local forecast office has a Warning Coordinator Meteorologist. Their only job is to tend to those relationships, help others plan, and keep the lines of communication open. The local office WCM position was vacant.

Even with a staff that was stretched due to vacant positions, the NWS did a decent job. Before the flood, they used language appropriate for the potential risk. As things developed, they issued alerts and statements.

During the afternoon of 7/3, they issued a Flood Watch, they talked about heavy rains and flooding. including amounts of up to 5-7 inches. In disaster terms, this is called a period of Period of Condensation, as numerous variables start to condense in a way that creates the potential for a disaster.

That night, at 12:42 AM, they upgraded the flood watch to a Flood Warning and identified an area of concern. At 1:26, they issued this statement: "flash flooding likely overnight with significant impacts possible." At 2:14, they expanded the affected area. At 4:06, they issued this statement: "A very dangerous flash flooding event is ongoing." In disaster terms, this is called the Period of Emergence. The variables have come together to create something, but we don't yet fully know the scale and scope.

Finally, at 5:15, NWS issued an emergency alert, reserved for the most dangerous of weather events that include a "severe threat to human life and catastrophic damage." This is called the Moment of Recognition where a shift from the normal to to the disaster takes place and we can see the outlines of the full disaster even if we don't have all the specifics. In other words, we know it is bad. We joke that this shift is the Oh Shift Moment.

The Guadalupe rose 30 feet between 4 AM and 6 AM.

This sequence from NWS is about as good as one can get. Potential risk to developing risk to disaster all done with massive amounts of uncertainty and holes in our understanding of the phenomena. I think they did a great job under the circumstances.

Meanwhile, local and state agencies were behind the curve. The first alert came from the Kerrville PD at 6:16. The Kerr County Sheriff followed at 6:32. More followed at 7:22, 7:33, and 8:32. Unfortunately, these alerts only went out over Facebook and X, two platforms that require a sign-up and have algorithms that do not recognize local disasters. Plus, many people don't have or don't look at those platforms regularly. It's OK to post on those, but it can't be exclusive. All this even with the City Manager getting calls around 5 AM.

It sounds like the phone alert system for floods and tornadoes was also used regularly for "Blue Alerts" about law enforcement actions anywhere in the state. The frequency of these led many to turn off the notifications.

Kerr County had recommendations to install a siren system, but they didn't do it. They opted to spend the money on roads instead.

Disaster comms, along with alerts and warnings, is a huge problem we have yet to fix. Like natural hazards, it needs much more research but it's the messy social science kind of research that was rarely funded in the past.

Four days ago, the Secretary for DHS was bragging about taking money from FEMA's Shelter and Services (a program authorized by Congress) and using it to build the Everglades Concentration Camp.

The Kerr County Judge was quoted as saying: “We know we get rains. We know the river rises. But nobody saw this coming.” No some people saw it coming. Reminds me of the many times I'd be talking to a local and they would say, "We just don't get fires like that here." Well, now you do and you'll get more of them, so you better prepare.

You're hearing a lot from politicians about natural disasters and prayer. There are no natural disasters. There are only natural hazards. If they manifest in a place where we humans have influenced the environment, it's a disaster. A hurricane in the middle of the Atlantic is not a disaster. A hurricane hitting Miami Beach is a disaster. Calling something unnatural natural is an excuse for bad policy. Calls for prayer can be sincere or they can be seen as a cover for bad policy choices. Use your critical eye here.

OK, that's enough for now.

 

They know its Trumps fault but have to bite their tongue.

The MAGA cult is killing Americans

 

Police budgets were at record high under Biden
NOAA funding was at record levels under Biden
Violent crime fell dramatically under Biden

But yeah sure the admin didnt care about safety lol. Braindead cultists

 

Ultimately, the current administration is responsible. I mentioned earlier that if there were a big failure, it would be due to a lack of planned replacements. But, it now seems replacements were indeed planned. This raises a reasonable question: why isn't NOAA transitioning to the newer, more capable system in sync with the removal of the outdated one?

https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/messages/2025/07/MSG_20250701_1815.html

Congress voted to terminate the DMSP program as far back as 2015 and DMSP will be replaced by the Weather System Follow-on Microwave (WSF-M) and the Electro-Optical/Infrared Weather System (EWS). DMSP satellites remain operational today but are more than a decade past their expected end of life. While the discontinuation of certain data streams from DMSP may seem alarming, the transition to WSF-M and EWS represents a modernization effort aimed at providing more resilient and enhanced environmental monitoring capabilities to improve our ability to understand and predict weather phenomena, including tropical cyclones. The first Weather System Follow-On – Microwave (WSF-M) satellite launched in 2024 and became operational in April 2025. WSF-M provides enhanced ocean surface vector wind and tropical cyclone intensity capabilities. WSF-M has reached initial operational capability (IOC) and initial data is being delivered to DoD users. The DoD is working towards full operational capability (FOC) which includes the technical work to send the data to NOAA as soon as possible. DoD users (including the Navy) will continue to receive and operationally use DMSP data sent to DoD weather satellite “direct readout terminals” across the DoD.