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The July 4 flash flood in Texas, which killed at least 78 people, highlights the country’s growing vulnerability to climate disasters.
As rescuers continue their desperate searches for missing children along the Guadalupe River, they warn that similar incidents could occur as the federal government cut funds for weather forecasts.
This includes California, where the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and its subsidiary, the National Weather Service, are upset by the cuts ordered by the Trump administration. In May, at least two offices in California in the NWS said they no longer had enough staff to operate overnight. Hanford and Sacramento cover almost all of the Central Valley and the Sierra Nevada Mountains, some of the state’s most fire- and current-growing regions.
Nationally, more than 600 scientists and meteorologists have already been fired or acquired by NOAA this year. The Trump administration plans to cut thousands more employees by about 17% of its workforce next year, and plans to cut the agency’s budget by more than $1.5 billion, according to its 2026 budget request. The president said the change will help reduce federal waste and save taxpayers money.
However, these and other changes are because climate change that has been affected by humans contributes to greater and more frequent disasters such as flooding, wildfires and hurricanes. In particular, floods in Texas were marked by a very intense, highly localized type of downpour, which is much more common due to global warming. Parts of the Guadalupe River rose 26 feet within an hour, state officials said.
“This is one of the hardest things to predict that it will be faster than most in a warming climate. It’s a moment when meteorologists and emergency managers are reimbursing their ability to coordinate.” “That triple line is like a recipe for disaster.”
Certainly, the Trump administration has already eliminated NOAA’s database to track billions of dollars of disasters, making it difficult to quickly tell how often such events occur. The last update before the closure confirmed 27 weather and climate disasters in the US in 2024, each with losses of over $1 billion. In the 1980s, the country adjusted for inflation with an average annual event of 3.3 events.
Last week, the administration closed the website of the US Global Change Research Program, which housed Congress-mandated reports and research on climate change. Meanwhile, weather services are beginning to halt weather balloon operations in multiple locations due to lack of staffing, reducing the amount of available data.
A submerged vehicle is sitting as search and rescue workers sees the fragments due to the remains of people swept by flash floods in Hunt, Texas.
(Jim Vondruska/Getty Images)
Details of the Texas incident are still unfolding. Some state officials were quickly pointing to the National Weather Service, including Texas Director of Emergency Management, Nim Kidd.
Agency officials said they did the job – issued multiple warnings prior to the incident. The timeline provided by the National Weather Service to the Times showed that the outlook for flood hazards, which was expanded on the morning of July 3, was issued, with increasingly urgent alerts.
“The National Weather Service is heartbroken by the tragic loss of life in Kerr County,” agency spokesman Erica Grow Say said in an email, adding that the NWS is “continuedly committed to our mission to serve the American people through forecasting and decision support services.”
However, the local office was also a number of key positions, including senior hydrologists, staff predictors and meteorologists, the New York Times reported Sunday. There was also no office warning and coordination meteorologists (who act as liaison between weather service and public and emergency management personnel).
On Sunday, Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro called for an investigation into whether agency staffing plays a role, saying that “not having enough staffing is never helpful” for CNN’s “union status.”
In a statement, the White House was not working on cutting staff, but the National Weather Service said there has not yet been any funding cuts.
“Texas’ timely, accurate forecasts and alerts this weekend prove that the NWS can fully implement its important mission,” a spokesman for the US Department of Commerce, which oversees NOAA, said in an email.
The exact situation surrounding the Texas tragedy will continue to be studied in days and weeks ahead, but experts say it is clear that such climate risks will continue to occur.
“There’s no doubt that the warm atmosphere has led to an increase in the frequency and magnitude of flash flood events worldwide,” said Jonathan Porter, Chief Meteorologist at Accuweather.
Porter praised the Weather Bureau for issuing a warning before the flash flood, but said there was a breakdown in the response of local officials to the information.
“The key questions are timely and what did people do in the issued warnings?” Porter said. “What was their response, what was their weather safety plan, and what did they do based on those timely warnings to ensure that people’s lives would be saved?”
After gunflood sweeps through the area of Hunt, Texas, people respond as they look at their belongings outside the Camp Mystic bedroom along the banks of the Guadalupe River.
(Julio Cortez/Applications)
But even efforts to strengthen coordination between the meteorological services and the public could soon appear in chopping blocks. NOAA has researched better ways to communicate disaster warnings, including improved public education and early warning systems.
According to the Swain of UC ANR, the president’s proposed 2026 budget would cut funding for a professional, high-resolution thunderstorm model developed for this type of event. He noted that it is a field of research pioneered by the US government.
“Historically, almost every research in the world towards understanding these types of storms and predicting them has been sponsored by the US federal government, and almost every advance we made has been funded by US taxpayer dollars,” Swain said. “No other countries are going to do that on behalf of the US… so if we don’t do it for ourselves, we’re not going to access it.”
The Texas flooding “represents that very kind of nightmare scenario, where it is likely to be proposed and implemented to some degree, and more likely to be possible for even more extreme reductions,” he added.
In particular, the NOAA and NWS changes meet other new priorities from the President, including new investments in oil and gas drilling.
In southeastern states such as Florida, authorities are working to diminish hurricane prediction capabilities during hurricane season.
And in California, where multiple wildfires are currently burning, state officials are also facing a decline in firefighting capabilities as Trump deployed National Guard fire forces in Los Angeles, reducing forest management and firefighter staffing at the U.S. Forest Service.
The administration has also expressed interest in disbanding FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency this fall.
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