Texas flash floods: more rain forecast as death toll passes 100
www.theguardian.com
Girls summer camp Camp Mystic confirms 27 children and counsellors dead

By late afternoon on Monday the death toll from the flash floods that have wreaked devastation in Texas since Friday had exceeded 100 and is expected to rise further as more victims are found and more rain threatens to deluge the region.

  • Boddhisatva@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    10 days ago

    The US Department of Homeland Security responded to criticism of warning systems on Sunday on social media by saying mainstream media were “lying” and that the National Weather Service issued timely warnings.

    Fuck Trump and everyone who still supports him.

    Predicting “how much rain is going to fall out of a thunderstorm, that’s the hardest thing that a meteorologist can do,” Vagasky says. A number of unpredictable factors—including some element of chance—go into determining the amount of rainfall in a specific area, he says.

    “The signal was out there that this is going to be a heavy, significant rainfall event,” says Vagasky. “But pinpointing exactly where that’s going to fall, you can’t do that.”

    Flash floods in this part of Texas are nothing new. Eight inches of rainfall in the state “could be on a day that ends in Y,” says Matt Lanza, also a certified digital meteorologist based in Houston. It’s a challenge, he says, to balance forecasts that often show extreme amounts of rainfall with how to adequately prepare the public for these rare but serious storms.

    “It’s so hard to warn on this—to get public officials who don’t know meteorology and aren’t looking at this every day to understand just how quickly this stuff can change,” Lanza says. “Really the biggest takeaway is that whenever there’s a risk for heavy rain in Texas, you have to be on guard.”

    And meteorologists say that the NWS did send out adequate warnings as it got updated information. By Thursday afternoon, it had issued a flood watch for the area, and a flash flood warning was in effect by 1am Friday. The agency had issued a flash flood emergency alert by 4:30am.

    The National Weather Service did stellar work with the tools that Trump’s DOGE cuts have left them with. The tragically inept emergency managers in Texas that think posts on Facebook and Twitter are good enough for emergency alerts should be strung up by their feet and at the next county fair and used for target practice with rotten fruit. As should every politician who voted against a siren type alert system when it came up for a vote last year.

    • bassomitron@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      10 days ago

      God damn, why am I not surprised that Republicans voted down a grant for counties to upgrade/improve/develop disaster response infrastructure.

      • Boddhisatva@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        10 days ago

        Yeah, I think they always expect to be out of office by the time the next big disaster hits. They’re coming faster and faster now, though. I don’t think that strategy will work anymore.

    • CCMan1701A@startrek.websiteEnglish
      0·
      10 days ago

      i will not hear about a 4am flood warning unless my phone went crazy. isn’t there a system in place to cause the phones to warm people about emergencies?

      • Boddhisatva@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        10 days ago

        There is and the national weather service alerts that night for the area should have triggered such alerts twice, according to another article I read.

        It was around midnight on Friday, July 4, when the first few thunderstorms began dumping heavy rainfall in central Texas. About an hour later, the first Flash Flood Warning was issued by the National Weather Service at around 1:14 a.m. This warning also included the “considerable” tag, which should have triggered wireless emergency alerts to go out to cell phones and NOAA Weather Radios.

        Then at 3:35 a.m., the original warning was upgraded and included the verbiage, “Move to higher ground now. Act quickly to protect your life.” Less than 30 minutes later, the warning was upgraded again to a Flash Flood Emergency and would have triggered the wireless emergency alerts once again.

        The problem seems to have been that the region where the floods were most dangerous has very spotty cell service. That combined with the fact that some people apparently turn their phones off at night prevented those alerts from reaching a lot of people. Also, the kids at Camp Mystic were not allowed to have phones with them during their stay.

    • CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      10 days ago

      “But pinpointing exactly where that’s going to fall, you can’t do that.”

      But it shouldn’t be hard to predict that this rain will all drain into rivers such as the one bordering on this camp even if it falls miles and miles away.