Cuts to NOAA and NWS impaired ability to predict Texas Flash Flood, as Texas blames agencies for 20+ death

Right in Elon’s town too.

[quote]Texas is blaming the NWS for the weather changing from the original forecast.

Ummm ... pretty sure the NWS doesn't (yet) have the ability to CHANGE THE WEATHER.

In related news, billionaires will now pay less taxes!

Where are my thoughts and prayers… I seem to have misplaced them…

And if the National Weather Service called for a foot and and inch fell people would be pissed for a moment and then move on with their lives. Hypocrites, all of them.

I feel bad for the kids, but...

Trump will be there soon with a skip of paper towels.

The Democrats are to blame...........

You ain't seen nothing yet............

I thought it was the Jews, r8?

Winning!

Breaking New: Actions Have Consequences!

FAFO, Texas.

Its Texas, who cares?

The question is whether Texans will start to care. I saw something about the mayor saying he had no warning.

How can people think climate change is fake but Democrats are controlling the weather?

All I know is FL is next. This hurricane season should be a blast.

Margie got some work done. That's why she hasn't been anywhere but Twitter

I don't blame NWS, but I am glad others are. Realistically, no one pays attention to flash flood watches or warnings. Especially in the middle of the night. But if this hurts Trump, then at least something good came out of it.

Am I the only old bitch on the planet with a weather radio (with an alarm)?

[quote]Am I the only old bitch on the planet with a weather radio (with an alarm)?

Everyone should have one. There are some really good models (like the Midland WR120) that are often cheap on eBay; people get rid of them after hurricane season, as if there won't be future disasters.

I know that what I write is neither here nor there, but I saw a post about how Our Lady is angry at what is happening to her people. 👦🏻👨🏽👩🏽‍🦱👩🏻

That’s why the Guadalupe river overflowed. 🤔

Some could call it karma, but some don’t believe it exists. 🤷🏻‍♀️

[quote] Am I the only old bitch on the planet with a weather radio (with an alarm)?

No one under the age of 60 even knows what you are talking about.

And no one under under the age of 80 has one.

[quote]And no one under under the age of 80 has one.

This cracked me up. My partner bought one years ago. He's almost six years younger than me, but is an old man in many ways. The best part is that I don't think it's even on now. He never figured out how to set the time, stop it from screaming those alerts from the NWS, etc. Basically, he's like your dad who could never set the clock on the VCR.

Hurricane season will be fun in all the red states.

FAFO.

[quote] Margie got some work done. That's why she hasn't been anywhere but Twitter

What did cro-mag Margie do?! Will I need to come up with a new read?

She needs to find a doctor good with an icing spatula to cover that crumb layer of bumpy skin she calls a face.

Her and Kristi Noem and Tulsi Gabbard, they all need spackle.

The Republicans are used to getting away with a lot of terrible things every year, but they are going to find out that Mother Nature is a little more difficult to mess around with.

Tulsi Gabbard looks like she needs more estrogen and bottom surgery.

Anyway... well, at least billionaires will get to pay less tax now.

R23, I’ve had one for decades. I live in a flyover state, and we tend to take weather seriously—I’ve had to take shelter in my tornado closet more than once in the middle of the night (or day). Not everyone on this board has the same sheltered life as you. Like Dustin says, it screams when you need to take action.

KKKunty KKKaroline got all pissy, as expected, when confronted by questions about Trump and Musk's cuts. "In fact, one of these offices was OVERstaffed!"

I've never seen a government office overstaffed. I once had to wait a month for an available administrator to give me a polygraph test. It takes so long to hire and train new people, these agencies are always woefully understaffed.

FEMA and NOAA are a waste of money. Those people were sitting around doing nothing and collecting huge paychecks. That money is better spent in giving tax cuts to the job creators. Thank you for your attention in this matter.

When AI takes all the jobs what will be the new excuse for tax cuts to job creators?

Now some people are saying a dam was opened upriver, causing the flood. Of course, the video they provide shows the wrong river.

A friend of mine with an increasingly feeble mind shared the video. She’s the same one who said the Elvis movie was too “woke” and it put him in a bad light. I just thought it was kind of a shitty movie.

[quote]Like Dustin says, it screams when you need to take action.

And it keeps you connected to the latest news in the event of widespread power, internet and cell tower outages. Check out the videos posted on YouTube in the months after Hurricane Helene, with people sharing what they wish they'd known (or owned) beforehand; few had anticipated scenarios that would keep them offline for days or weeks.

I have a weather radio. It also has a flashlight and is powered by a solar/hand crank rechargeable battery into which I can plug my cell phone.

I use the flashlight every night when I let my dog out.

I have one of those things too. My mother gave us one for Christmas after Sandy. I’ve never had to use it.

Still will it scream when all of the NWS employees are RIF’ed?

I live near a river that floods in rainy years. It's watched like a hawk by everyone. Houses in river towns are on stilts, every inch is measured when it starts to rise, sandbags are dragged out to block entry ports, some get their kayaks ready for a spin.

A flash flood is something different, I imagine something like an unexpected out of control wildfires that happen here, too. The first one was bad, then you put prevention efforts in place for the next time.

Those people knew the river flooded sometimes. The unwillingness to pay for alarm warning systems along with cuts to NOAA paved the way to this death and destruction.

Yes, lets save a little here and there on weather alerts and vaccine proficiency so we can give the really important savings to billionaires.

It has to be a weather radio that is plugged in to the wall, powered on all the time and waiting to alert you. I guess people can use their phones for this, but the weather radio is louder and gets my attention. I also still listen to AM radio!

Just wait. Cuts to aviation security are coming next.

Well, I read somewhere that we don’t have to take off our shoes in the airports anymore. 🤷🏻‍♀️

That’s just the start, r45.

I saw that absurd claim, too, R38. There are many small (or low?) "spill-over" dams along both forks of the Guadalupe River -- and along some of the larger creeks that feed it -- but there are no SIGNFICANT dams holding back major reservoirs water, that could be "opened" in the way that many of us think of huge dams with spillways (Hoover, Glen Canyon, Oroville, TVA).

Wow, R47! You're a dam expert!

Whom shall we blame? Hmmm?

[quote]Texas Sen. Ted Cruz slashed funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration mere days before his state was hit by deadly flash floods.

[quote]According to a report from The Guardian, Cruz amended President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” to end a $150M fund that sought to “accelerate advances and improvements in research, observation systems, modeling, forecasting, assessments, and dissemination of information to the public.” The ultimate goal of the federally funded program was to create better forecasts with more lead time.

A guy being interviewed on our local station said he LIVED across from the Guadalupe. That just doesn't sound like a great idea.

[quote] The head of FEMA’s Urban Search and Rescue branch, which runs a network of teams stationed across the country that can swiftly respond to natural disasters, resigned on Monday. Ken Pagurek’s departure comes less than three weeks after a delayed FEMA response to catastrophic flooding in central Texas caused by bureaucratic hurdles put in place by the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the disaster response agency.

[quote]Pagurek told colleagues at FEMA that the delay was the tipping point that led to his voluntary departure after months of frustration with the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the agency, according to two sources familiar with his thinking. It took more than 72 hours after the flooding for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to authorize the deployment of FEMA’s search and rescue network.