Trump's NWS cuts were blamed for Texas flood deaths. Here are the facts

Yahoo

17-07-2025

Following the devastating and destructive flash flooding in central Texas on July 4, 2025, users online claimed that U.S. President Donald Trump's administration was ultimately to blame for the flood's 100 deaths due to staffing cuts at the National Weather Service.
The weather service issued a series of timely alerts: a flood watch early in the afternoon on July 3, a flash flood warning at 1:14 a.m. July 4, and a flash flood emergency at 4:03 a.m. July 4, before any in-person reports of flooding had been received.
Communicating the warnings to the public was made more difficult because the flooding happened in the middle of the night in an area without a robust emergency communication system. Also, it was the Fourth of July weekend, when many people who weren't local residents — meaning they may have had less knowledge of the flash flooding risks — were present.
Although Trump's cuts did affect staffing at the two weather service offices in charge of the affected area, an agency spokesperson told Snopes via email that both offices were fully staffed at the time of the floods.
At 5:15 a.m. July 4, 2025, the gauge recording the water level on the Guadalupe River just upstream of Kerrville, Texas, measured its height at 1.82 feet above the standard reference value. An hour and a half later, at 6:45 a.m., the gauge recorded the river's height at 34.29 feet. Earlier that night, the skies had opened up and did not relent.
The flash flooding that resulted from the deluge killed at least 106 people in Kerr County as of July 14, and at least 26 more in nearby counties, according to The Texas Tribune.
In the wake of the catastrophic floods, Texas officials and people online began theorizing on why the storm and its floods were so deadly in this case.
One theory shared on social media sites such as TikTok, Facebook, and X blamed U.S. President Donald Trump's administration for the deaths. According to these posts, the Department of Government Efficiency initiative championed by former Trump ally and tech billionaire Elon Musk implemented massive spending cuts at the National Weather Service, allegedly leaving already underfunded and understaffed forecasters struggling to keep up.
https://www.facebook.com/thatsnotrightpolitics/posts/pfbid02JHpLw1Do77SVU3dZN9f7s2ZDU9UtL4ERg83FvQxne89zRyRbUmT18tEsomt5EhDBl
Snopes found that the case was similar to that of a tornado in Somerset, Kentucky, that killed 19 people in May 2025. That is, the local weather service offices issued timely watches and warnings in advance of the disaster, but the Trump administration's cuts have left the weather service as a whole, including both Texas offices in charge of forecasting the affected area, understaffed.
National Weather Service facts
The weather service maintains 122 offices around the country dedicated solely to weather prediction, and it has 13 different River Forecast Centers, which provide local offices "river and flood forecasts and warnings as well as basic hydrologic information."
The area affected by the Texas flooding is covered by the San Angelo and Austin/San Antonio weather service offices and the West Gulf RFC in Fort Worth. National Weather Service spokesperson Erica Grow Cei told Snopes via email that those offices "had extra personnel on duty during the catastrophic flooding event in Texas's Hill Country during the July 4 holiday weekend."
The name "flash flood" gives away the danger at hand — "flash" can refer to both the incredible speed at which the water rises and the flood's sudden onset after excessive rainfall.
In order to predict a flash flood, meteorologists must first accurately predict where heavy rain will fall and compare it with the "flash flood guidance," an "estimate of the amount of rainfall required over a given area during a given duration to cause small streams to flood," issued by the appropriate River Forecast Center.
In this case, the West Gulf RFC maintains the following guidelines for the area most heavily affected by the floods:
The archived excessive rainfall outlook forecasts issued at least twice a day by the weather service in the days leading up to the flooding labeled the area first at a "marginal" risk (at least a 5% chance), then at a "slight" risk (at least a 15% chance) for flash flooding.
July 3 weather forecasts
The precision required to predict where in a storm it will rain the heaviest makes predicting flash floods very difficult. Greg Waller, a service coordination hydrologist at the West Gulf RFC, told The Texas Tribune the area's terrain "makes it so precipitation forecasts off by just 20 miles could affect entirely different river basins."
Accordingly, the San Angelo office's afternoon forecast on July 3 said predicting the day's weather was "complicated." It noted the potential for a band of "torrential" rainfall that could lead to flash flooding, but, according to the forecast, the weather "features are so weak and the interaction so complicated, if and where this band develops remains uncertain."
The Austin/San Antonio weather office's afternoon forecast on July 3 also predicted heavier rain. The 1:38 p.m. bulletin noted "an environment presently conducive to heavy rain, supporting 1 to 2 inch per hour rain rates," approaching the flash flood guidelines.
It continued:
Models remain in disagreement over the placement of the heaviest rain totals, though the greatest rainfall potential this afternoon into tonight is over the Highway 90 corridor, southern Edwards Plateau and Hill Country. Rainfall totals of 1 to 3 inches appear likely, but locally higher amounts upwards of 5 to 7 inches could materialize if slow-moving storms begin to cluster. Given the heavy rainfall potential, some flooding is possible. A Flood Watch is now in effect through 7 AM Friday morning for the southern Edwards Plateau and western Hill Country, where the intersection of higher forecast rainfall amounts and rainfall from the past few days is most evident. While the greatest concentration of modeled precipitation is in the aforementioned areas, the highest rain amounts could shift depending on where storms aggregate, and expansion towards the I-35 corridor is possible later this evening into the overnight as the trough moves gradually east.
Flood watches and warnings
The weather service has three stages of alerts for most environmental dangers. The afternoon forecasts from both San Angelo and Austin/San Antonio, 12 hours in advance, issued a flood watch for the area. That's the designation of lowest concern "issued when conditions are favorable for flooding. It does not mean flooding will occur, but it is possible," according to the weather service.
The next level, a warning, is issued when "a flash flood is imminent or occurring." Warnings trigger emergency alerts on TVs, radios and cellphones. The first flash flood warning came in for the Kerrville area at 1:14 a.m.
At 4:03 a.m, the warning was upgraded to the most serious alert, an emergency — a life-threatening situation issued when, as Austin/San Antonio weather service meteorologist Bob Fogarty told The Texas Tribune, "someone has told us we need to get people out of here immediately or people are going to die."
Cei told Snopes that for flash floods, the National Weather Service is generally able to give residents "3 hours or more of what we call 'lead time', which is the time in between the warning being issued and the event occurring." In this case, that lead time on the initial warning was about accurate. The warning was issued at 1:14, and Cei said the first reports of flooding happened at 4:35 a.m., after the upgrade to an emergency.
In other words, the forecasting wasn't the problem.
Staffing and communications
The problem, as with many other deadly natural disasters, was communicating the danger to residents. That problem was likely exacerbated by the 4th of July holiday drawing in out-of-towners unfamiliar with flash flooding risks and absolutely exacerbated by the fact that the warning and subsequent flood occurred in the middle of the night in an area that, according to The Texas Tribune, does not have a robust emergency communication system.
The nonprofit newsroom reported that state lawmakers rejected a bill to spend $500 million on improving such systems across the state in 2024 over concerns it would cost too much. Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly (in Texas, county judges are responsible for emergency management) said in the story that county residents rejected installing a flood siren system, like those used for tornadoes, for similar reasons.
It's possible that cuts to the weather service workforce may have exacerbated the communication problems, but it's unclear to what extent. Cei told Snopes the offices were appropriately staffed during the disaster. The New York Times reported that the Austin/San Antonio office has been without a warning coordination meteorologist since April 30, although NBC News reported that Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the union that represents NWS employees, said the office has an employee acting in that role.
That position, which Cei said exists at all 122 weather offices around the nation, works with local officials to plan for emergencies, including how to warn affected residents and help them evacuate if needed. The individual reportedly accepted the Trump administration's early retirement plan, offered as part of DOGE's initiative to gut the federal workforce.
The Austin/San Antonio weather office's official page lists six vacancies and 21 active staff members. The San Angelo page does not list vacancies, but The Texas Tribune reported it has four vacancies out of 23 total positions.
Cei said the weather service continues to move staffers around on temporary and permanent assignments to fill the roles at its offices "with the greatest operational need."
"Additionally, a targeted number of permanent, mission-critical field positions will soon be advertised under an exception to the Department-wide hiring freeze to further stabilize frontline operations," she added.
According to The New York Times, more than 600 workers at the weather service had left due to the Trump administration's policies as of June 2. Fahy told the paper the agency had been approved to add 126 new hires to address the understaffing.
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