Q: Is it true that if President Donald Trump hadn’t defunded the National Weather Service, the death toll in the Texas flooding would have been far lower or nonexistent?
A: The Trump administration did not defund the NWS but did reduce the staff by 600 people. Those staffing cuts did not cause the high number of deaths in the flash floods on July 4, experts said. Local forecasting offices were sufficiently staffed and issued timely warnings. But experts raised concerns about key positions being vacant, which could have affected coordination with local communities.
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As search efforts continued after the July 4 flooding along the Guadalupe River — which killed at least 120 people, including 46 children, and left more than 170 missing as of July 10 — experts said that the National Weather Service forecasting offices in south central Texas had a sufficient number of staff members on duty and that they issued timely warnings to the local communities.
We received emails from several readers asking about false claims on social media that Trump had “defunded” the NWS earlier this year and that those purported cuts contributed to the impact of the flooding and the death toll.
The Trump administration has not “defunded” the NWS and has proposed a 7.6% increase in its budget for fiscal year 2026. However, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the NWS, has proposed significant budget cuts in FY 2026. The proposed cuts include closing the National Severe Storms Laboratory that has developed key tools in predicting flash floods.
This year, the administration did cut “roughly 600” positions in the NWS workforce, which had about 4,200 people, through layoffs, buyouts and retirements by the spring, Tom Fahy, legislative director for the NWS Employees Organization, a union representing government workers, told us.
But Fahy told NBC News that the weather forecasting offices “had adequate staffing and resources as they issued timely forecasts and warnings leading up to the storm” in Texas.
Pat Fitzpatrick, an assistant professor of atmospheric science at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, told NPR, “State officials followed proper pre-storm and ongoing storm-protocols. The National Weather Service also followed their proper protocols of warnings and a flood emergency statement,” he said. “It’s an unfortunate, tragic event.”
Alan Gerard, former director of the analysis and understanding branch at NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory, wrote in a July 5 Substack post that the Texas flooding was “truly a low probability, worst case scenario.”
The deluge of rain that fell in the early morning hours of July 4 in the Hill Country caused the Guadalupe River to rise 26 feet in 45 minutes at Hunt, Texas, NWS spokesperson Erica Grow Cei told us. “Rainfall rates were 2 to 3 inches per hour at times,” she said.
Gerard also wrote, “A common refrain in the emergency management and disaster community is that a disaster is rarely the result of one failure or event, it typically is the end result of a cascade of multiple things that go wrong. For this tragedy, the obvious overarching contributing factors are that the flash flood event occurred in the middle of the night when people are typically asleep and less likely to be able to take protective action, and that it occurred at the start of a long summer holiday weekend when campgrounds and resorts such as the ones that cluster along the Guadalupe River are most likely to be full.”
Gerard wrote that “just as what I have been able to see about this event shows me the NWS did a solid job, similarly there is little evidence that any of the recent cuts to NOAA/NWS negatively impacted services for this event, regardless of what may be being said on social media.”
Asked by a reporter on July 6 whether staffing cuts resulted in key personnel gaps at the NWS, Trump said, “No, they didn’t. If you look at that, what a situation that all is, and that was really the Biden setup. That was not our setup. But I wouldn’t blame [former President Joe] Biden for it either. I would just say, this is a 100-year catastrophe and it’s just so horrible to watch.”
A spokesperson for the Commerce Department, which includes the NWS, told the New York Times, “The timely and accurate forecasts and alerts for Texas this weekend prove that the NWS remains fully capable of carrying out its critical mission.”
A timeline compiled by NPR said the Texas Division of Emergency Management activated state emergency response resources on July 2 due to the flood threat in west and central Texas. The NWS office in Austin/San Antonio posted on X at 3:41 p.m. that day that moderate to heavy showers were developing in the Hill Country.
On July 3 at 1:18 p.m., the Austin/San Antonio office issued a flood watch. At 6:10 p.m. the NWS posted a report saying “flash flooding likely.” At 11:41 p.m., the Austin/San Antonio office posted a flash flood warning.
On July 4 at 1:14 a.m., the Austin/San Antonio office issued another flash flood warning. At 3:06 a.m., the Austin/San Antonio office posted, “A very dangerous flash flooding event is ongoing across south-central Kerr County into northwest Bandera County, where 3-7 inches of rainfall has occurred the last 2-3 hours. … Turn Around, Don’t Drown!”
Key Positions Empty at NWS Offices
Some Democratic leaders have called for an investigation into whether staff vacancies at the NWS offices in Austin/San Antonio and San Angelo affected the warning system and resulted in lives lost in the area known as “Flash Flood Alley.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer sent a letter to the Commerce Department’s acting inspector general on July 7 asking him to “open an investigation into the scope, breadth, and ramifications of whether staffing shortages at key local National Weather Service (NWS) stations contributed to the catastrophic loss of life and property during the deadly flooding.”
Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas also called for an investigation into NWS staffing vacancies during an interview on CNN. “When you have flash flooding, there’s a risk that you won’t have the personnel to make that — do that analysis, do the predictions in the best way,” Castro said. “And it could lead to tragedy. So, I don’t want to sit here and say conclusively that that was the case, but I do think that it should be investigated.”
Fahy, of the NWS employees union, told us that the Austin/San Antonio weather forecasting office was operating with six job vacancies and the San Angelo office had four job vacancies on July 4. Each office had five meteorologists on duty when the flooding occurred.
But Fahy said he was concerned that the Austin/San Antonio office had not filled two top-level positions, a permanent science officer who oversees implementation of new technology and a warning coordination meteorologist.
Paul Yura, who had been the warning coordination meteorologist at the Austin/San Antonio office, took an early retirement offer in April as part of the government’s staffing cuts, Austin’s KXAN reported. His role included sending timely warnings of severe weather to local public safety officials and emergency managers.
John Sokich, a former director of congressional affairs at NWS, told the New York Times that vacant slots at NWS offices affect coordination with local officials. “Reduced staffing puts that in jeopardy,” he said.
In the hours leading up to the July 4 flood, “The forecasting was good. The warnings were good. It’s always about getting people to receive the message,” Chris Vagasky, a meteorologist based in Wisconsin, told NBC News. “It appears that is one of the biggest contributors — that last mile.”
Richard Spinrad, a former NOAA administrator, said in a July 8 interview on CNN, “I am convinced that the staff cuts that we saw were a contributing factor to the inability of the emergency managers to respond. The staffing was just fine, and the White House has concurred with this, to get the forecast out and to get the watches and warnings issued, but when you send a message there’s no guarantee it’s being received. So someone needs to follow up, and that’s the warning coordination meteorologist — a position that was vacant.”
Fahy also told us the San Angelo office had not permanently filled its meteorologist-in-charge position and had a vacancy for a hydrologist, who analyzes stream flow and plays an important role in flood response.
In May, after 250 NWS probationary employees were fired or took buyouts and 300 veteran staffers left the service, five former NWS directors published an open letter raising concerns about staffing levels. “That leaves the nation’s official weather forecasting entity at a significant deficit — down more than 10% of its staffing — just as we head into the busiest time for severe storm predictions like tornadoes and hurricanes,” they wrote. “Our worst nightmare is that weather forecast offices will be so understaffed that there will be needless loss of life.”
The letter from the former NWS directors also expressed concerns that proposed cuts in next year’s NOAA budget would “essentially eliminate NOAA’s research functions for weather.”
NOAA received $6.1 billion in appropriations from Congress in fiscal year 2025. It has proposed a budget of $4.5 billion in FY 2026, which includes a 17% reduction in its workforce.
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