07/08/2025

Meteorologists Say the NWS Did Its Job in Texas

Experts say the agency accurately predicted the state's weekend flood risk

At least 27 people, including nine children, are dead in central Texas after flash floods struck suddenly on the morning of the Fourth of July holiday. After a storm in which a month’s worth of rain fell in some regions in just a few hours, officials say they rescued more than 850 people from the floods over Friday and Saturday. A number of people were still missing as of Saturday afternoon, including 27 young campers from a Christian girls’ camp on the banks of the Guadalupe River.

Some local and state officials have said that insufficient forecasts from the National Weather Service (NWS) caught the region off guard. That claim has been amplified by pundits across social media, who say that cuts to the NWS and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), its parent organization, inevitably led to the failure in Texas.

But meteorologists who spoke to WIRED say that the NWS accurately predicted the risk of flooding in Texas and could not have foreseen the extreme severity of the storm. What’s more, they say that what the NWS did forecast this week underscores the need to sustain funding to the crucial agency.

Please select this link to read the complete article from WIRED.