Weather Expert Sees Texas Floods as Worst Case Scenario

Bloomberg

5 days ago

CC-Transcript
00:00When you look at what had happened in Texas, devastating floods, the deaths exceeding 90. Should there have been something different that officials were doing to alert the people in the course of the storm? Well, I mean, look, to me, the first place to start is with the understanding that this really was a unfortunately a worst case scenario as it developed. You had thunderstorms move repeatedly over the same area, this particularly vulnerable south Fork of the Guadalupe River for 3 to 4 hours produced just incredible amounts of rain in an area that is very flood prone. This this region is known as flash flood alley. The whole country of Texas. And there have been, you know, catastrophic flash floods on this river in the past. So it it was definitely very difficult to anticipate, you know, more than a few hours, you know, really before the rains started. It would be difficult to anticipate that this particular area was going to have such a catastrophic event. But we certainly would encourage people that are in these kind of, you know, particularly flood prone areas, whether you're talking about individual people or, you know, businesses like campground and stuff, to have multiple ways to receive warnings so that they can act when there's just a devastating event like this. I am curious and we should just point out, too, of course, as they are still search for people and try to start the cleanup there, we are expecting more rain, more heavy rains in that area over the next 24 hours. It raises a question, though, too, Allan. I mean, as someone who understands how these weather patterns unfold, there have been a lot of talk about the drought that was affecting this area prior to that and how that may have actually made this worse. Explain that in layman's terms. Essentially, the soil type in this part of the country is such that when it is dried out by drought, it almost kind of acts like concrete. It becomes very hard and impermeable. So when you get the sudden summer thunderstorms on top of this, the soil type, the water just runs off like it does in urban areas. And so that just exacerbates how much water actually gets into the river itself and is part of the reason why you get these, you know, these massive flood waves on these rivers in the hill country. I don't want to divert too much attention away from the loss of human life, from the tragedy. But I am curious to get your thoughts. Having worked at Noah and seeing the budget cuts that have taken place over the last few months, not just at Noah, but in other programs that are designed to monitor hurricanes, a monitor weather patterns, especially now that we are in hurricane season or getting into the heart of hurricane season. I am curious as to whether the United States, in your view, is going to be prepared for future weather patterns of this type of severity? Well, I mean, it does appear like the Weather Service was able to provide the warnings and forecasts that one would typically expect for this kind of an event over the weekend. But having said that, there are a number of offices around the country that are significantly challenged as far as staffing because of some of the buyouts and firings that occurred earlier this year. So I'm definitely very concerned that as we go on through the summer, through the hurricane season, that the weather service is going to continue to be increasingly stressed. You know, we don't know exactly how much impact that might have had on this event, but it's certainly a problem for future events.