As Texas Flood Deaths Rise, Officials Blast Faulty Forecast by National Weather Service

[ozso]

Well the OP article names three officials.

Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd, Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice, and Kerr County judge Rob Kelly complained that the NWS didn't predict a flash flood described as a sudden "wall of water". It doesn't seem that they elaborated on just how predictable such an event is.

From the article:

 

[iluvatar5150]

Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd, Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice, and Kerr County judge Rob Kelly complained that the NWS didn't predict a flash flood described as a sudden "wall of water". It doesn't seem that they elaborated on just how predictable such an event is.

From the article:

View attachment 367213

After reading about the known flooding risks in this area, I'm inclined to agree with Kevin here. IME, it's not uncommon for folks at small and mid-sized organizations to scoff at the need for such preparations and safety precautions.

 

[FaithT]

I have been looking for decades and no president has received such a high level of hatred and hostility. Not even Bush 2. Have you ever seen a Biden or Obama version of this?:

No,but it’s accurate.

 

[Lukaris]

Here are the tragic statistics of flood deaths in America from 2010-23. Is one political group more to blame than another? The stats are variable and cut across different political leaderships. I always thought a tragedy is a tragedy. As much as I don’t like the democrat party, I don’t recall associating any of my opinions towards natural disasters.

U.S. number of flood deaths 2023| Statista

In 2023, there were a total of 79 fatalities reported due to floods in the United States, down from 105 fatalities in the previous year.

www.statista.com

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[wing2000]

"Listen, everybody got the forecast from the National Weather Service," Kidd reiterated. "You all got it; you're all in media. You got that forecast. It did not predict the amount of rain that we saw."

W. Nim Kidd, director of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, criticized the Weather Service at a Friday news conference, saying that amount of rain “was never in any of those forecasts.”

The NWS can not have accurately predicted the quantity of rainfall with these type of Thunder storms....storms that stall over an area and dump insane amounts of rain.

Thursday afternoon, forecasters at the Weather Service office in San Angelo noted that there was potential for the storm system and all of that moisture to converge, but it was far from clear that could produce catastrophic floods.

“If this happens in this air mass [with precipitable water values soaring well above normal values] rainfall could be torrential and flash flooding would develop very quickly,” forecasters at the Weather Service office in San Angelo wrote Thursday afternoon. “Still, these features are so weak and the interaction so complicated, if and where this band develops remains uncertain.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2025/07/04/texas-flooding-extreme-rains/

 

[SimplyMe]

Here are the tragic statistics of flood deaths in America from 2010-23. Is one political group more to blame than another? The stats are variable and cut across different political leaderships. I always thought a tragedy is a tragedy. As much as I don’t like the democrat party, I don’t recall associating any of my opinions towards natural disasters.

U.S. number of flood deaths 2023| Statista

In 2023, there were a total of 79 fatalities reported due to floods in the United States, down from 105 fatalities in the previous year.

www.statista.com

​

​

My recollection is the majority of flooding deaths occurred in "red" states -- besides Texas, their have recently been Hurricane Helene (Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee and Virginia), Kentucky in 2022, Tennessee in 2021; basically it has been mostly red states. Though, perhaps not you, but there were plenty on the Right who tried to blame FEMA's response to Hurricane Helene on Pres. Biden.

If we extend it to other types of disasters, then you get the California fires, where every time a fire occurs Trump attempts to blame California officials. This includes the time where the fire primarily devastated a National Forest, where the fire started, and which California is not responsible for maintaining.

 

[wing2000]

It's human nature to ignore or play down potential risks when deciding to implement an expensive, automated monitoring system....often, it takes a tragic event for people to re-prioritize.

Eight years ago, in the aftermath of yet another river flood in the Texas Hill Country, officials in Kerr County debated whether more needed to be done to build a warning system along the banks of the Guadalupe River.

In the end, little was done. When catastrophic floodwaters surged through Kerr County last week, there were no sirens or early flooding monitors. Instead, there were text alerts that came late for some residents and were dismissed or unseen by others.

The rural county of a little over 50,000 people, in a part of Texas known as Flash Flood Alley, contemplated installing a flood warning system in 2017, but it was rejected as too expensive. The county, which has an annual budget of around $67 million, lost out on a bid at the time to secure a $1 million grant to fund the project, county commission meeting minutes show.

....

in a recent interview, Rob Kelly, the Kerr County judge and its most senior elected official, said that local residents had been resistant to new spending. “Taxpayers won’t pay for it,” he said, adding that he didn’t know if people might reconsider now.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/06/us/texas-flood-warnings-sirens.html?campaign_id=190&emc=edit_ufn_20250707&instance_id=157991&nl=from-the-times&regi_id=6046459&segment_id=201381&user_id=24ee0a2f48a00f7845fccfed4e0edadb

 

[essentialsaltes]

Quick action by one Texas summer camp leads to timely evacuations ahead of deadly flood​

Despite an absence of warning by local authorities, [Presbyterian Mo-Ranch Assembly] camp officials acted quickly on their own, relocating about 70 children and adults staying overnight in a building near the river.

 

[Lukaris]

My recollection is the majority of flooding deaths occurred in "red" states -- besides Texas, their have recently been Hurricane Helene (Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee and Virginia), Kentucky in 2022, Tennessee in 2021; basically it has been mostly red states. Though, perhaps not you, but there were plenty on the Right who tried to blame FEMA's response to Hurricane Helene on Pres. Biden.

If we extend it to other types of disasters, then you get the California fires, where every time a fire occurs Trump attempts to blame California officials. This includes the time where the fire primarily devastated a National Forest, where the fire started, and which California is not responsible for maintaining.

I think disaster politics goes back to hurricane Katrina and it seems like it came mostly from the left.

 

[rjs330]

I think disaster politics goes back to hurricane Katrina and it seems like it came mostly from the left.

What we have typically seen from the left is if a disaster occurs in a blue state the left blames a republican president. If it happens in a red state they blame the republican governor and say nothing about the Democrat president.

 

[rjs330]

Those that blamed Trump for this need to repent from their slander.

 

[GoldenBoy89]

Those that blamed Trump for this need to repent from their slander.

Are we totally sure it isn’t those darn democrats with their weather machine again?

 

[MotoToTheMax]

Those that blamed Trump for this need to repent from their slander.

Ya know what, you're right. Even Press Secretary Leavitt said blaming this "act of God" on Trump is entirely unwarranted.

So let's blame God. Thank God for dead children. Literally. It's all part of his plan so let's pray and be thankful for whatever reason He decided to send that flood for and take em home. Maybe. Not sure if those kids are old enough for the age of accountability or not. Let's just hope for the best in that regard. Someone tell the parents that whatever grief they have is for a higher purpose. Praise be!

 

[rjs330]

Ya know what, you're right. Even Press Secretary Leavitt said blaming this "act of God" on Trump is entirely unwarranted.

So let's blame God. Thank God for dead children. Literally. It's all part of his plan so let's pray and be thankful for whatever reason He decided to send that flood for and take em home. Maybe. Not sure if those kids are old enough for the age of accountability or not. Let's just hope for the best in that regard. Someone tell the parents that whatever grief they have is for a higher purpose. Praise be!

Mocking during a natural tragedy does not suit you. Thats all I'm going to.say. You may keep spewing your venom if you want to. Cause the rest if us know how the phrase is commonly used. Which isnt to actually blame God. Buh by

 

[MotoToTheMax]

Mocking during a natural tragedy does not suit you. Thats all I'm going to.say. You may keep spewing your venom if you want to. Cause the rest if us know how the phrase is commonly used. Which isnt to actually blame God. Buh by

That wasn't mocking. Show me where I was wrong.

 

[FaithT]

You get what you give.

I’ve never seen a more hateful person elected to such high office.

Neither have I. He’s a joke.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Silvana Garza Valdez and María Paula Zárate, 19-year-old camp counselors from Mexico, recalled the events during the deadly disaster that killed more than 100 people, including 27 campers and counselors, in an interview with NMás Saturday.

In the very early morning hours of July 4, Zárate first heard the torrential downpour that prevented her from sleeping and at 3 a.m. the electricity went out throughout the Hunt, Texas, camp. At midday, the counselors were informed that girls from another section of the camp had been caught in the flooding and that the surviving girls were safely relocated in a camp dining hall.

Realizing the severity of the situation and seeing that the survivors from the other part of the camp were evacuated via helicopter, Zárate and Garza Valdez began preparing the campers under their supervision.

“We began writing the girls’ names on their skin, wherever it could be visible,” Zárate said. “We told them to make a bag with all their things, whatever was most necessary ... to get ready to evacuate."

It wasn’t until the water spilled out of its banks and furniture from the campgrounds rushed by that the younger campers began to really understand what was happening. That’s when questions were slung at Zárate and Garza Valdez, who reassured their troop that they’d be OK. The campers were quelled with games and songs until they were informed that they too would be evacuated.

“All the girls lost their cool, they all began crying because they didn’t want to leave campgrounds, because they wanted to be with their parents. It was a terrible situation,” Garza Valdez said.

 

[Say it aint so]

Those that blamed Trump for this need to repent from their slander.

Better yet, and speaking of blame and repenting:

Trump blames Biden, yet again

Speaking on Sunday, President Donald Trump brushed aside criticism that federal budget cuts to weather, and emergency agencies had worsened the disaster. As questions grow about why the public was not warned sooner or why people were not evacuated from the area known to be popular with campers, Trump sought to deflect the blame and claimed that the situation was a "Biden setup". "That was not our setup," Trump said when asked about warnings that failed to reach campers in time. He claimed the situation was a "Biden setup," despite having been in office for around six months​

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Think the man who claims to be Christian but will tell you he doesn't make mistakes and has no need to repent or ask forgiveness is going to, as you suggest, repent?

 

[essentialsaltes]

We've yet to hear a good accounting of what local officials did or didn't do in the face of the warnings NWS provided.

... while at least one neighboring county issued evacuation orders in the morning hours of July 4, Kerr County officials don’t appear to have done so.

A review of typically off-the-record communications from a real-time messaging system operated by the National Weather Service showed that no emergency manager from Kerr County was sending messages or interacting with NWS staff on the platform, even as emergency officials from other counties were doing so. CNN was granted permission to report some of the information from this platform.

The lack of messages doesn’t mean officials in Kerr County weren’t monitoring the communications from the NWS and acting on them. But it raises new questions about local officials’ actions, particularly in a crucial window between NWS’s first public warning alert at 1:14 a.m. and a more urgent flash flood warning sent several hours later.

Kerr County Emergency Management Coordinator W.B. “Dub” Thomas declined to comment when CNN asked him to explain actions the county took in the early morning hours of Friday.

“I don’t have time for an interview, so I’m going to cancel this call,” he said.

--

Caroline Cutrona, a counselor at Camp Mystic, told CNN that counselors were not allowed to keep their phones at work, so she never received the NWS warnings. Cutrona was in a higher area at the camp overnight and avoided the floods.

 

[Pommer]

Mocking during a natural tragedy does not suit you. Thats all I'm going to.say. You may keep spewing your venom if you want to. Cause the rest if us know how the phrase is commonly used. Which isnt to actually blame God. Buh by

It now appears that the local disaster officials didn't heed the warnings that they got, and when confronted tried to blame others (notably the NWS).
They (these same “local officials”) are probably doing an adequate job in the aftermath, but should (be forced to?) resign after the clean-up.