Jack, are you okay?

[mnaz]

I heard about the Texas floods. I'm not sure, but I think maybe you were pretty close to the Guadalupe River. I think the hardest hit was west of San Antonio, but I heard that places like New Braunfels were impacted too.

[stilltrucking]

I am ok. Flooding is not in my area.
Thanks. DOGE has a lot to do with this disaster.

As the Texas Floodwaters Rose, One Indispensable Voice Was Silent
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/09/opin ... s-nws.html

cut and paste

When a reporter demanded to know why the summer camps along the Guadalupe River weren’t evacuated before its waters reached their deadly peak on July 4, Rob Kelly, the highest-ranking local official, had a simple answer: “No one knew this kind of flood was coming.”

Why not? Kerr County, Texas, had lots of history to go on — as Kelly went on to explain: “We have floods all the time. This is the most dangerous river valley in the United States.” The National Weather Service had even brought in extra staff that night. Most important, the service had issued three increasingly dire warnings early that morning — at 1:14 a.m., 4:03 a.m. and 6:06 a.m.

What Kelly didn’t mention, but which has since become well known, is that the Weather Service employee whose job it was to make sure those warnings got traction — Paul Yura, the long-serving meteorologist in charge of “warning coordination” — had recently taken an unplanned early retirement amid cuts pushed by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. He was not replaced.

In Flash Flood Hotspots, Many Federal Meteorologist Positions Remain Unfilled

An analysis of National Weather Service vacancies found that in more than a third of offices overseeing regions that are particularly vulnerable to flash floods, one or more of three senior leadership roles, including chief meteorologist, are unfilled.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... ncies.html