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

[BNR32FAN]

The NYT article was accurate and reported that warnings had been issued correctly and in a timely manner.

That being said, every NWS office is supposed to have a warning coordination meteorologist. Unfortunately, this position is vacant at the San Antonio NWS.

The Warning Coordination Meteorologist (WCM) is the individual who is responsible for the warning program at the office (i.e. warning information that is sent to the public, verification of warnings, formatting warning information for "Storm Data" publication). This includes interacting with emergency managers, county officials, schools and the media.


Head of local weather warnings takes early retirement as NOAA cuts continue

Paul Yura, the warning coordination meteorologist at the National Weather Service Austin/San Antonio office, has announced he has taken the early retirement offer as part of NOAA’s recent cuts to personnel and budget.

The warning coordination meteorologist (WCM) is a senior role at a local NWS office. According to NOAA, “The WCM coordinates the warning function of the office with the outside world. This would include heading the Skywarn Program, conducting spotter training and being a voice to the local media for the office.”

The importance of experience in the WCM role cannot be overstated. Ensuring ample and timely warning to the Central Texas counties covered by NWS Austin/San Antonio is among the chief responsibilities.

It’s irrelevant if the flash flood warnings went out the day before the incident. The people were warned with plenty of time to evacuate.

 

[BNR32FAN]

That's not entirely true. Pulled from above.

The Weather Service’s nearby San Antonio office, which covers other areas hit by the floods, also had significant vacancies, including a warning coordination meteorologist and science officer, Mr. Fahy said. Staff members in those positions are meant to work with local emergency managers to plan for floods, including when and how to warn local residents and help them evacuate.

So there is some need to coordinate warning with local officials. And no doubt having that additional warning coordinator could have helped.

That said, again, if one has taken the time to read this thread, the finger has pointed more and more to what local officials did and didn't do. (and let us not forget that it was local officials who first pointed fingers at the NWS).

When a flash flood warnings went is in effect you’re supposed to get away from rivers, creeks, and streams a low land. So when you hear a flood alert and you’re near a river bank it shouldn’t take a rocket scientist or a person with a masters degree in meteorology to tell you to get away from the river.

 

[SabbathBlessings]

That's what they voted for--a government run on ignorance and greed. They have only themselves to blame.
If we were not all potential victims of this colossal mistake I might feel more sympathetic.

Little kids voted for this and deserved their fate. So CA deserved to die in the fire because of their politics?

I find this sentiment very sad.

 

[SabbathBlessings]

Modern cellphones are equipped with the ability to broadcast loud alarm noises for alerts, so everyone sleeping shouldn't be an issue.

Doesn't change the fact that the forecast by the NWS was wrong. Had the forecast been accurate, the people maybe wouldn't have decided to go camping, or at least chosen a more secure spot for their camp.

The forecast is never right in Texas, because the weather is changing constantly.

 

[Desk trauma]

The forecast is never right in Texas, because the weather is changing constantly.

Unlike the other 49 states where the weather is static.

 

[SabbathBlessings]

Unlike the other 49 states where the weather is static.

In California you can pretty much depend on sunny skies in the summer. In Texas you can't depend on anything when it comes to weather. This is my own experience living in both states. The weather will say sunny in Texas but outside is cloudy, its never right.

 

[Nithavela]

In California you can pretty much depend on sunny skies in the summer. In Texas you can't depend on anything when it comes to weather. This is my own experience living in both states. The weather will say sunny in Texas but outside is cloudy, its never right.

I have my doubts that this is because of any texan weather anomalies and not because of a failure in the system that creates those forecasts.

 

[essentialsaltes]

When a flash flood warnings went is in effect you’re supposed to get away from rivers, creeks, and streams a low land. So when you hear a flood alert and you’re near a river bank it shouldn’t take a rocket scientist or a person with a masters degree in meteorology to tell you to get away from the river.

What if 'you're' an 8 year old in a cabin with no cell phone? If we consider them blameless, we have a chain of potential responsibility to consider.

NWS forecasts and warnings: sent out as soon as the forecasts warranted it.
NWS warning coordinator to work with local officials: one missing in the region due to staff reductions
Local emergency officials: Kerr county didn't call for evacuations or use IPAWS to warn people until far too late.
Camp Mystic staff: delayed one hour after receiving the warning before beginning the evacuation

 

[Fantine]

Little kids voted for this and deserved their fate. So CA deserved to die in the fire because of their politics?

I find this sentiment very sad.

I'm a little confused. I do not believe in a vengeful God, but I do believe in a God who allows natural consequences. He gives us free will. We make mistakes. Scientists have proven over many decades that how excessive use of fossil fuels and wasteful living cause climate change. Water levels rise due to warmer temperatures. There are many more catastrophic climate events. There are famines due to droughts. We collectively elect leaders who are decimating departments such as FEMA, NIH, and the Weather Service that protect Americans when danger threatens. These children are dying because of collective voting decisions for which I am not responsible. My heart breaks for them.

 

[SabbathBlessings]

I'm a little confused. I do not believe in a vengeful God, but I droughts do believe in a God who allows natural consequences. He gives us free will. We make mistakes. Scientists have proven over many decades that how excessive use of fossil fuels and wasteful living cause climate change. Water levels rise due to warmer temperatures. There are many more catastrophic climate events. There are famines due to droughts. We collectively elect leaders who are decimating departments such as FEMA, NIH, and the Weather Service that protect Americans when danger threatens.

This is what you said....many of the people who died were children

That's what they voted for--a government run on ignorance and greed. They have only themselves to blame.
If we were not all potential victims of this colossal mistake I might feel more sympathetic.

How are little girls to blame for their death? They didn't vote. Its just a very unsympathetic way to view things based on politics instead of the tragedy of what happened. These things happens in all states both left and right and agree to a certain degree that when we vote for politicians that are not protecting what they are supposed to, time to wake up, but I do not think victim blaming for little girls is a good idea. Not everyone in affected areas voted the same way and we should care about individuals over the way they voted even if we do not agree with them.

We are all given free will, just expressing my views. You do not have to agree, I am ok with it.

 

[Say it aint so]

Oh so you didn’t read the part about the flash floods warnings being broadcast the day before the incident? Who cares where that guy was the fact is that the warnings went out the day before it happened.

Yes I did. Text messages and media transmissions. Now do you want to read about the warnings of what cutting science, those who enact that science to keep Americans aware being cut is (and in this case) will negatively affect safety?

 

[Pommer]

This is what you said....many of the people who died were children



How are little girls to blame for their death? They didn't vote. Its just a very unsympathetic way to view things based on politics instead of the tragedy of what happened. These things happens in all states both left and right and agree to a certain degree that when we vote for politicians that are not protecting what they are supposed to, time to wake up, but I do not think victim blaming for little girls is a good idea. Not everyone in affected areas voted the same way and we should care about individuals over the way they voted even if we do not agree with them.

We are all given free will, just expressing my views. You do not have to agree, I am ok with it.

I think you may have misread our good friend’s missive.

The “blame” falls on those who vehemently opposed using Federal monies to build a siren-based warning system for their (own) county, because they had fears that if they had accepted the monies, the Feds, (Biden Administration, at the time) could come into the county and make them take COVID shots.

There’s plenty enough rancor without pushing more in where it don’t belong.

 

[iluvatar5150]

I found out we're 2-3 degrees of Kevin Bacon from several folks involved with the camp, including the director who drowned. My wife's college roommate almost sent her 8yo daughter there this year.

 

[SabbathBlessings]

I think you may have misread our good friend’s missive.

The “blame” falls on those who vehemently opposed using Federal monies to build a siren-based warning system for their (own) county, because they had fears that if they had accepted the monies, the Feds, (Biden Administration, at the time) could come into the county and make them take COVID shots.

There’s plenty enough rancor without pushing more in where it don’t belong.

Hopefully I did misunderstand.

Thanks

 

[Fantine]

This is what you said....many of the people who died were children



How are little girls to blame for their death? They didn't vote. Its just a very unsympathetic way to view things based on politics instead of the tragedy of what happened. These things happens in all states both left and right and agree to a certain degree that when we vote for politicians that are not protecting what they are supposed to, time to wake up, but I do not think victim blaming for little girls is a good idea. Not everyone in affected areas voted the same way and we should care about individuals over the way they voted even if we do not agree with them.

We are all given free will, just expressing my views. You do not have to agree, I am ok with it

Fake empathy is the kind of thoughts and prayers we hear politicians and others pretend to pray after school shootings. They are completely unconcerned about preventing future school shootings because they like their guns too much.
Real empathy is acknowledging some of the causes of the tragedy and determining to do all one can do to prevent similar tragedies from happening in the future.
A local car dealership is gathering donations to drive down to the Texas Flood area. I am going to the store after I exercise and getting some things to donate. That's the liberal way. Action and solutions, because thoughts and prayers are a bunch of Bologna if not accompanied by actions and solutions.

 

[SabbathBlessings]

Mat 6:3 But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,

 

[SimplyMe]

In California you can pretty much depend on sunny skies in the summer. In Texas you can't depend on anything when it comes to weather. This is my own experience living in both states. The weather will say sunny in Texas but outside is cloudy, its never right.

This is much to generalized to mean anything, as "California" does not have just a single type of weather each day, nor does "Texas." In fact, both states have some "wet" climates and both states have deserts. The climate of Houston is different than that of Dallas, and both are far different from that of the desert of West Texas. Same with California, with Death Valley, with it raining there maybe once a year, and then Eureka, which only has 179 sunny days every year.

So, if you were in So Cal (which from the comment, I'm guessing you were), then you are basically part of the desert climate and only get 14" of rain a year, just that the ocean moderates the weather and provides more rain that areas further from the coast. So, if you were in Houston -- a sub-tropical climate with its weather affected by the Gulf -- you see about 45" of rain during the year and very humid conditions even when sunny in the summer. It is also worth noting that Dallas is further North than Los Angeles (Dallas and San Diego are fairly close to the same latitude) and Northern California, such as Eureka, is further North than New York City.

Having said that, I don't know what you are talking about regarding poor weather forecasts. Now, if you want to compare weather forecasts of 3 days or more, yes, there is often a fair amount of "guesswork" as meteorologists don't have all the information (and it seems to be getting worse under the Trump administration, such as blocking access to weather data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program) to fully predict storms. At the same time, as a Senior Citizen, I've seen huge improvements to weather forecasting in my lifetime. My experience in most places is that while you have to take forecasts 3 days or more with a grain of salt, once you get within 48 hours the forecasting tends to be very accurate; with the primary issues not being what the weather is but that they sometimes miss on the severity. At the same time, it was amazing in Texas to have weather apps, rather accurately, inform me when it would start raining and how hard the rain should be.

Which gets us back to the point, within the key time period , the last 24 hours, the forecasting was accurate. They called the flash flood warning 12 hours before the storm hit. They called the flash flood watch over an hour before the heavy rain started (which is why the camp delayed an hour). There are times you can be critical, such as the time in Houston when they claimed there would be a hurricane and the city evacuated, but then the storm hit Beaumont instead and, being on the West of the storm, it wasn't even much rain in Houston. OTOH, far better to use caution in projections, get people out of the city early, rather than think it isn't going to hit and then have people stuck on freeways trying to leave while the hurricane is coming on shore.

I'll also note, one of the issues in Houston, is that most forecasts use a lot of historical data. That doesn't work for Houston because it is built on a swamp that has now been cemented over for miles. Historically, the water would seep into the ground which, at least until the ground got saturated (and because of the swamp, the ground could take a lot of rain), helped to prevent flooding. Now, the ground can't hold much water anymore, which is why Houston had 3 "500 year" storms (with lots of flooding) in about a 3 year period.

 

[SabbathBlessings]

This is much to generalized to mean anything, as "California" does not have just a single type of weather each day, nor does "Texas." In fact, both states have some "wet" climates and both states have deserts. The climate of Houston is different than that of Dallas, and both are far different from that of the desert of West Texas. Same with California, with Death Valley, with it raining there maybe once a year, and then Eureka, which only has 179 sunny days every year.

So, if you were in So Cal (which from the comment, I'm guessing you were), then you are basically part of the desert climate and only get 14" of rain a year, just that the ocean moderates the weather and provides more rain that areas further from the coast. So, if you were in Houston -- a sub-tropical climate with its weather affected by the Gulf -- you see about 45" of rain during the year and very humid conditions even when sunny in the summer. It is also worth noting that Dallas is further North than Los Angeles (Dallas and San Diego are fairly close to the same latitude) and Northern California, such as Eureka, is further North than New York City.

Having said that, I don't know what you are talking about regarding poor weather forecasts. Now, if you want to compare weather forecasts of 3 days or more, yes, there is often a fair amount of "guesswork" as meteorologists don't have all the information (and it seems to be getting worse under the Trump administration, such as blocking access to weather data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program) to fully predict storms. At the same time, as a Senior Citizen, I've seen huge improvements to weather forecasting in my lifetime. My experience in most places is that while you have to take forecasts 3 days or more with a grain of salt, once you get within 48 hours the forecasting tends to be very accurate; with the primary issues not being what the weather is but that they sometimes miss on the severity. At the same time, it was amazing in Texas to have weather apps, rather accurately, inform me when it would start raining and how hard the rain should be.

Which gets us back to the point, within the key time period , the last 24 hours, the forecasting was accurate. They called the flash flood warning 12 hours before the storm hit. They called the flash flood watch over an hour before the heavy rain started (which is why the camp delayed an hour). There are times you can be critical, such as the time in Houston when they claimed there would be a hurricane and the city evacuated, but then the storm hit Beaumont instead and, being on the West of the storm, it wasn't even much rain in Houston. OTOH, far better to use caution in projections, get people out of the city early, rather than think it isn't going to hit and then have people stuck on freeways trying to leave while the hurricane is coming on shore.

I'll also note, one of the issues in Houston, is that most forecasts use a lot of historical data. That doesn't work for Houston because it is built on a swamp that has now been cemented over for miles. Historically, the water would seep into the ground which, at least until the ground got saturated (and because of the swamp, the ground could take a lot of rain), helped to prevent flooding. Now, the ground can't hold much water anymore, which is why Houston had 3 "500 year" storms (with lots of flooding) in about a 3 year period.

I was speaking of my own experience living in both States for many many years. Living in California if you want to paint your house in June, I could count on it not to rain. At least in the 30+ years I lived there. In Texas you can't schedule anything like painting your house in the summer or really anytime, because it could be hailing, it could start off sunny and 5 minutes start later start pouring down rain. If you do not understand this, chances are you never lived in Texas. That's why there is the saying, if you don't like the weather in Texas, wait a few minutes.

Also, you cannot count "sunny days" in Texas like you do in California. They count mostly cloudy days with a bit of sun mainly around evenings as sunny days where in CA it is sunny the whole day without a cloud in the sky. If anyone who has lived in both states understands what I am speaking about, at least in the areas I lived in Texas and CA

 

[BNR32FAN]

What if 'you're' an 8 year old in a cabin with no cell phone? If we consider them blameless, we have a chain of potential responsibility to consider.

NWS forecasts and warnings: sent out as soon as the forecasts warranted it.
NWS warning coordinator to work with local officials: one missing in the region due to staff reductions
Local emergency officials: Kerr county didn't call for evacuations or use IPAWS to warn people until far too late.
Camp Mystic staff: delayed one hour after receiving the warning before beginning the evacuation

In my experience a flash flood warning is always a call for evacuating low lands especially drainage canals, creeks, and riverbeds every single time. Flash flood warnings typically specifically tell people to avoid these areas. Anyone with any common sense at all should know that you never ever shelter in place in these kinds of areas during a flash flood warning.

 

[BNR32FAN]

Yes I did. Text messages and media transmissions. Now do you want to read about the warnings of what cutting science, those who enact that science to keep Americans aware being cut is (and in this case) will negatively affect safety?

No I’m not interested in speculation to push a particular political agenda I’m interested in actual facts.