Reply to Did Trump's cuts to NOAA and the National Weather Service impact predicting the flash floods in central Texas?

Forum Index » Political Discussion

Reply to "Did Trump's cuts to NOAA and the National Weather Service impact predicting the flash floods in central Texas?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Natural disasters unfortunately happen.  But, if we do everything we can and have the right people, process in place, we can say we did all we could.

But, if you gut the staff that deals with natural disaster warning systems, and then bad sh*% happens, people will question whether the cuts impacted the ability to plan and respond.

And what exactly did the cuts achieve overall?  It really didn't make a dent in the debt, which the Rs just raised by a sh*% ton.   All for the sake of cutting taxes mostly for the rich.

Meanwhile, almost 100 lives lost, and now people questioning whether these cuts made things worse.

Or was this just all God's will?  I can't keep up with MAGA excuses.[/quote]

You realize cuts had nothing to do with this disaster - right?  NWS did its job and sent out flood warnings and evacuation notices all through the night.  There was no cell service in this area.

Why can’t you people be honest, even just once?  This had nothing to do with Trump or cuts at all.  The NWS was fully staffed and operational.  [/quote]

There are vacancies at the NWS and specifically this particular office. It sounds like a veteran employee there would normally have called specific contacts at the county, but since he was now retired, that didn't happen, so yes, this was Trump's fault. It was also a colossal failure at the county level.[/quote]

Matt Lanza, a Houston-based meteorologist, said there were no initial indications that staffing levels or budget cuts played a role in the tragedy.

Vagasky, the Wisconsin meteorologist, said predicting flash flooding and extreme rain is notoriously difficult.

“Quantitative precipitation forecasting, called QPF, is one of the hardest things meteorologists have to do. You have to get the right location, the right amount, the right timing,” he said. “They were aware this was a significant event, and they were messaging that.”

Severe weather response in the middle of the night is one of the biggest challenges. That’s when we see the most tornado fatalities and the most flooding fatalities. People are asleep. They can’t see the tornado or the water rising,” he said. “Did people have their emergency alerts turned on on their phones?”

Vagasky, who has criticized staffing reductions and cuts to weather balloon releases at the NWS, said he did not think better staffing would have prevented the tragedy.

“Those are important positions that do need to be filled,” he said, but he added that it “probably wasn’t a significant contributor to what happened.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/national-weather-service-nws-staff-cuts-trump-budget-texas-floods-rcna217139
[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics