That's just like, his opinion, man.

I'm all for meteorology, but that isn't the part of your budget that affronts me.

I am trying to be unhappy about the possibility that Trump and Musk will get unfairly blamed for a tragedy, but so far I've had no success. I will keep you updated if I make any progress on that.

Just summarizing things I have seen go by on other feeds without trying to figure out if there was a key thing to blame. Not sure if this pushes the conversation forward much.
I think there is agreement that the forecasts and warnings were adequate, but didn't reach the people who urgently needed to get them. Why not?
a) middle of the night, catastrophically fast rise (but warnings should be designed for those circumstances, too)
b) alert infrastructure could have been better (sirens proposed long ago but not funded).
c) local agencies chose to disseminate warnings only via Facebook and Twitter
d) cell phone alerts existed but many people had turned them off because police chose to put "blue alerts" of policemen in danger on that same channel leading to alert fatigue
e) the camp where the girls were washed away chose to have a pre-electronics experience for the campers and forbade phones, ipads, other things like that. Pre-modern camping experience increases risk of pre-modern flood impact?
f) staff cuts included people specifically tasked with improving dissemination of alerts. (this is vague and disagrees with the link in the OP. I don't know if I could find the source cited but when I saw it go by it seemed well supported).

Overall, the impression I get is that Texas has made some choices similar to what Musk and Trump are trying to implement nationwide. Not enough socialism, and it has consequences. Of course my drawing that conclusion is overdetermined. Incidentally, my campus has installed alert sirens and I hate them. But I'm not responsible for 750 young campers and I might feel differently if I were.

From what I've read, and from my own experience, it's also easy to downplay the risk of a flash flood when they're relatively common: it means "don't drive on that one low-lying road" or "if your backyard abuts the creek you might have some water."

Most of the NOAA cuts haven't gone through officially, but f) seems to be plausible if some people "voluntarily" retired. Tech brain is going to kill us all. Not everything runs like a startup!

But in any case, it's hard to see how more cuts and more demonization of people going into science is going to help make better models and warning systems. I'm trying to imagine what happens when we just don't have meteorologists because we cut all those programs in favor of, let's see, nursing, AI, and probably certificate programs in concentration camp guarding.

Nowhere near the cataclysmic levels of the TX flooding, but last night was pretty wet here too. Everything's fine in my part of town, but this is about a mile from the house I grew up in near the Eno River. Lots of highways closed in central NC this morning.
https://www.wral.com/news/local/dozens-rescued-flooded-homes-eno-river-durham-county-july-2025/

I've heard (e) and it seems insane - surely the adults had electronics and are responsible for putting in contingency plans.

Jammies and I have been discussing this ad nauseum, and put the failure on the camp directors. You have to have massive amounts of anxiety/vigilance when you're disaster planning, and they should have had an alarm system tied to water levels, and a predetermined level at which they evacuate the cabins, and it should have been set at an ultra-safe setting so that no one was making a decision in the middle of a crisis.

And possibly they do have this, and it was set to go in motion too late.

The part that's hard is that they're so close to the source of the guadalupe that there's only one sensor upstream of them. But the camps collectively could have installed another one.

I mean, obviously we blame Republicans for abandoning/sabotaging the goal of safe societies. But within that context, we're blaming the directors.

Auteur theory has its supporters.

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Heebie, I just sent you a meetup post request (LB is busy with other responsibilities these days). Would you kindly post it for me? Thanks.

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I'm not saying it's extremely common but the posts I've seen on Bluesky taking glee in these kids deaths because their parents likely voted for Trump are grim.

I'm actually about to take a shift driving, mid-Alabama. If Apo or someone is on a computer, they might be faster? if it's time-sensitive.

You can drive and use your phone in Alabama only if it's Mobile.

12 Sure, I'll post the text here since it's tomorrow:

Hello reprobates, apologies for the very short notice but I'm back in town and meeting a bunch of you this Tuesday July 8 at Half Pint/Ernie's Bar at W3rd and Thompson in NYC. Festivities begin around 5 pm. Lurkers most welcome.
Hope to see you there.

Barry Freed

11: My Bluesky curation is successful in that I don't see those posts, but I do see the posts complaining about those posts. It's kind of depressing that a lot of the responses are along the lines of, "Well, actually, Democrats send their kids to these camps, too."

11 and 15: I also managed to avoid those, but I have seen people talk about them.

When I lecture on flood to my Sac State students, I tell them that the sirens are for real, that they no longer do the monthly tests on Friday at 11am so if they hear the sirens they need to get to the top of a parking garage pronto. There really is nothing like sirens for notifying everyone around in real time.

The other thing I've seen done is to send a helicopter down the river course ahead of the flood (a tiny dam failed, sending an eight foot surge down the river).

I would probably run to the basement out of the training of my youth.

I've recommended Daniel Swain as someone to follow on weather-related issues before, so I'll recommend him again: His Bluesky account is probably the easiest way to follow him now that Bluesky is generally open even if you don't have an account. It's a bit hard to piece together his timeline at the moment because of various reposts, but I think if you go to this post and then scroll up you get his preliminary analysis.

My takeaway is that it's too early to state anything confidently about the role of the federal budget cuts (including the "encouragement" for people to leave). It's not clear if the linked substack post where the author seems extremely confident in saying "don't blame the budget cuts" came out before or after reporting about vacant positions.

At least the more important one of the links in 19 was formed correctly.

I need a time stamp, so that I know how long I drove for.

Three hours!! That's super long for me!

14: let's see if I can post from my phone.

Reddit has found transcripts of the Kerr County Commissioners' Court considering and rejecting sirens.

You can tell this disaster is worse than the winter storms because Ted Cruz went clear to Europe instead of just Cancun.

24 is so grim, holy shit.

We've all wasted federal funds to avoid the horrors of them either going back to New Jersey or helping to keep local children safe.

i have avoided reading articles bc i'm super ill & don't want to read about dead children but have to say i am boggled that childrens' camp cabins were in a flash flood zone??? holy hell. shouldn't be a question of evacuation plans, that use should be prohibited outright.

i could see a case for grandfathering in existing daytime recreational facilities provided robust warning systems are in place & regularly tested, & the situation publicized to parents. i think it's bad policy, but even an extremely laissez faire land use regulator should adopt & enforce at least those provisions.

Some people apparently hate the idea of sirens.

Statistically, a flood plain has proven safer than Crystal Lake. Until recently.

The progression in those transcripts at the Reddit link are incredible. Up to 2017, it's a discussion of flood warning systems in mostly administrative terms. Then, post-Covid in 2021 it's about whether the money is from the treasonous Biden administration who took the gloves off with draconian covid restrictions and now the money is tainted and should only be used, if at all, to fuck up Biden's agenda. The administrators spend time reassuring residents that they will spend the money in accordance with their own values, but if they send it back to the Treasury, it might go to New Jersey, New York or, god forbid, California.

If that post is accurate, they end up spending $7 million on an emergency communications system upgrade - which doesn't seem bad on its face - but less than $1 million is too much for a flood system since apparently neighbors calling neighbors and camps calling other camps is apparently enough of a warning system for locals.

Shorter 31: Heebie's 26 is right.

am reminded of a time years ago when i was handling permitting dd for utility scale solar in the desert on deals run out of the east coast & the eastern lawyers kept on mocking the idea that there could be flood hazards & water quality issues in the desert. i was sufficiently freaked out to make colleagues with children promise they wouldn't ever camp in the desert, they had zero fucking clue about flash floods in arid landscapes.

i'm willing to concede that in the foreseeable future, e.g., sacramento will probably remain. but there is absolutely no justification for having children sleep in a flash flood zone as part of a purely recreational seasonal use. this is not a use that would cost the earth & trigger wrenching inequitable social dislocations to move!

I think my cousin lives in Sacramento. Some suburb.

It seems like an emergency communications systems upgrade that doesn't include a public alert system is just more toys for cops.

24: it's like that old joke about the man who drowns in a flood after refusing rescue because "God will provide", except God says I sent you funding in 2017 and 2021, and the first time you didn't think the sirens were aesthetically pleasing and it might help newcomers or tourists, and the second time you thought you'd keep the PPP money and own the libs.

It is absolutely a political failure, just not a federal one.

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F1 is an orgy of luxury capitalism, but not in a hott way.
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The joke in 36 is so on-the-nose.

For 36.last, to be fair, that point is in the OP.

Sure, but it's the *local* failure that I think gets me. As I told shiv last night, "local" means "there's someone to blame and they're near enough that I could crush their throat" and had it been Pebbles? What reason would I have left to not?