No. of Recommendations: 8
My brother works at the National Weather Service in Oklahoma. He says a common debate at the service is whether to phase a forecast as the most likely outcome or a worse case outcome. All forecasts should include a probability indicating the uncertainty. Forecasting temperature is easy, and forecasting rainfall amounts is difficult.
Sounds like there is no government emergency protection in Texas. Each camp is on its own.
"Asked Saturday afternoon what kind of procedures the county had to warn the summer camps along the river about flooding emergencies, Rice said that each camp is private."
Emergency alerts should have gone out 3 hours before the flood hit. Did the emergency alert system work?
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National Weather Service defends its flood warnings amid fresh scrutiny of Trump staff cuts, July 6, 2025
"The National Weather Center indicated Kerrville, Texas, and its surrounding areas could be at risk of flash flooding Thursday, according to the National Weather Service timeline. Then, NWS Austin/San Antonio issued a flood watch at 1:18 p.m. Thursday into Friday morning. It issued its urgent flash flood warnings for Kerr County at 1:14 a.m. ... The agency noted that it sent out a flash flood warning with tags of “considerable” or “catastrophic” at 1:14 a.m. CT Friday, which would trigger wireless emergency alerts on enabled mobile devices."
https://www.yahoo.com/news/national-weather-defend..."The original forecast that we received on Wednesday from the National Weather Service predicted three to six inches of rain in the Concho Valley and four to eight inches of rain in the Hill Country," Kidd said. "The amount of rain that fell in this specific location was never in any of those forecasts."
https://www.npr.org/2025/07/06/nx-s1-5458512/texas..."Rain began to fall around midnight, and the first flash flood warning was issued by the NWS at 1:14 a.m. Friday, Fogarty said. That warning should have triggered a response by local emergency management and local media to spread the word to those in harm's way, as well as the Emergency Alert System that broadcasts warnings to televisions and radios, Fogarty said.
All NWS flash flood warnings, including the one issued after midnight on Friday, trigger Wireless Emergency Alerts, the emergency push notification sent through cellphone towers to all wireless phones in the emergency area, Fogarty said. That warning was updated nine times throughout Friday, each of which triggered separate alerts through the Emergency Alert System and the Wireless Emergency Alerts, Fogarty said.
The most serious warning came at 4:03 a.m. when the NWS issued a flash flood emergency, warning of an “extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation” and urging immediate evacuations to higher ground. Flash flood emergencies are issued using a mixture of rainfall data and on-the-ground reports: “Someone has told us we need to get people out of here immediately or people are going to die,” Fogarty said. ...
Asked Saturday afternoon what kind of procedures the county had to warn the summer camps along the river about flooding emergencies, Rice said that each camp is private. This situation happened very fast, he said, so "there wasn’t a lot of time in this case as far as warnings.”"
https://www.texastribune.org/2025/07/05/texas-hill... 