Did National Weather Service cuts lead to the Texas flood disaster? We don’t know | Rebecca Solnit

WHi exactly many people drowned in the terrible floods of Independence Day that swept through the country of Hill in Texas, may have multiple interpretations that take some time. But in 2025, people want answers immediately, and many people have seized stories that blame national weather service (NWS).

There were two reasons for blaming this vital government service. For local and state authorities, a blaming of a branch of the federal government was a way to avoid guilt themselves. For a large group of people who denounce Trump’s discounts of federal services, including the National Oceanic, Air cover and national weather service, the idea that NWS has served to emphasize the destruction of these cuts.

Many of them found confirmation in the New York Times story This ran with the sub -line: Some experts say that the lack of employees may have the ability of the predictors to complicate the coordination of responses with local emergency management officials. may be He did not. complicated He did not fail. It is an easily wrong specification of a report, and there is the opening sentence: “The decisive situations in the local offices of the national weather service were not, as harsh rains immersed parts of the center of Texas on Friday morning, which prompted some experts to ask whether the lack of employment makes it difficult for the prediction agency in coordination with local emergency managers with a rise in floods.”

An informal reader can appear in thinking that lack of employment had consequences. But if the sentence full of hints is given more than attention, you may want to ask those who are exactly the unknown experts and whether there is an answer to their questions. Did it make it more difficult, and did they really do this thing even though it was more difficult, or not? Did they coordinate with local emergency managers?

These former officials said, “The shortage of employment has proposed a separate problem, and it seems that the” proposal “seems to be an explanation of what these unknown sources that may happen or may happen, instead of what he already did. The suggestions are not facts. The possibilities are not realistic. In the end, we reached a named source:” A spokeswoman for the national weather service, Erika Cor Cai, did not answer questions from New York newspaper The Times on Vacancies, including the duration of which these positions were open and whether these vacancies contributed to the damage caused by floods. “

In other words, there is no answer to suggestions, questions and panels. However, many readers collected the impression that this was not intended to be named, but the assertion that NWS has failed. One of the prominent public figures, which includes three quarters of a million Bluesky followers, participated in the New York Times with this note: “The United States government is no longer able to protect us from real risks, such as failed floods, because it converts money into fake risks, such as a wave of migrant crimes that are not present.”

If you read a few ten paragraphs in this article in the New York Times, you will reach the former NWS director, saying: “Local weather service offices seem to have sent the correct warnings. He said the challenge is to make people receive these warnings, then take action.” However, the idea of ​​NWS’s failure has become widespread that WIRED has published a a report Specifically to his confrontation: “Some local and state officials said that insufficient expectations from the national weather service in which the region was caught. This claim was amplified by Critics Through social media, who say this reduces NWS and the National Oceanic and atmosphere Administration, its mother organization has failed in Texas. “

They are bound to nearly a million followers, who were published on Twitter: “Now TX officials blame the wrong expectations of NWS for the deadly influence of the storm.” These officials are, but why do we believe in them? WIRED continues: “But meteorologists who spoke to Wire say that NWS accurately predicted the danger of floods in Texas and did not expect the intense storm’s intensity.” However, we are on another piece of image: the difference between a precision prediction of risks and the exact extent of the severity of it.

Climate change, which was mentioned by some reports and others, is a contributing factor for the specified weather disasters and the reason that the future will not necessarily appear past. For both fires and floods, the old rules are about how quickly they move and the expiration of their validity. The most hot air carries more moisture, this can lead to more heavy rains and worse floods. On the other hand, as The Kerrville Daily Times I mentionedCare province has a history of very heavy rains, which leads to a rapid river and destroyed floods.

The Washington Post had a better evaluation of what happened correctly and what happened wrongly: “But even when the weather forecasts began to hint on the possibility of heavy rains on Thursday, the response revealed a separation: a few, including local authorities, is ready for anything other than its regular camps from July. The province did not send, in this report, the first alert on the mobile phone until Sunday, while” most of the mobile phone alerts are coming from the station Austin/San Antonio in national weather service. But some of the life -threatening floods did not come until hours ago, and to the areas where the cellular reception was intermittent. “

It seems that the national weather service was its duty despite the discounts, but more. Reports of the free fossil note: “A few days before the flood, the Sinator Texas Ted Cruz helped pass the so -called beautiful Bill, which is also a comprehensive freedom of freedom as well It reduced 200 million dollars Of the weather forecasts in Noaa and general alert programs. It was supposed to improve the money from early warnings for exactly a type of fatal flood that struck his own condition. The cuts were not in the home version. Cruz added them to the Senate, behind closed doors, as head of the committee that oversees the Noaa. “The effect of discounts on biomedics will lead to a deterioration of daily life and adds to the risks we face, and as far as politicians such as Ted Cruz feel, this is the plan.

The desire to obtain an explanation, and the desire to be this interpretation is arranged and in line with the individual’s policy, easily ready to accept what suits it. But knowing that we do not know, knowing the answers has not yet been done, or that there are multiple reasons, and be careful even with the sources that tell us what we want to hear: all this equipment to survive at this moment. We all need to be careful about how to obtain information and find conclusions – both practical information about climate disasters, weather disasters and the press. Both weather and news require vigilance.