Beleaguered Weather Service defends its forecasts as Texas officials point fingers over flood warnings [View all]
Source: CNN Climate
Updated Jul 5, 2025, 10:51 PM ET
PUBLISHED Jul 5, 2025, 8:54 PM ET
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.
The National Weather Service warned of “life-threatening flooding” along the river in a series of alerts in the early morning hours. But questions remain about how many people they reached, whether critical vacancies at the forecast offices could have affected warning dissemination, and if so-called warning fatigue had been growing among residents in a region described as one of the most dangerous in the country for flash flooding.
The National Weather Service 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 closely involved in forecasting and warning about the flooding on the Guadalupe River — Austin-San Antonio and San Angelo — are missing some key staff members, but still issued a slew of watches and warnings about the flood danger. The question is whether the warnings reached who they needed to reach.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/05/climate/texas-flooding-forecast-response
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