I took a meteorology class in 1999

[cksmithy]

before getting my BA degree in Liberal Arts to teach k to 8th grade. It was a fascinating class, learned all sorts of info. The professor was about my age late 40's to 50 years old. Her first job, as she told us, for working for insurance companies that covered farms and their losses. She used topographical maps, temperatures, etc. readings to go with the maps, and then after pouring over them, using math formulas, would produce the weather forecast for the next day. They wanted the farms to succeed, the companies didn't want to pay out for a loss.

As the professor said, once computers became involved, it was very easy to forecast the weather, hence she became an educator. Why on earth would tsf and his minions want to hurt farmers and their capability to produce food. I am afraid they have very diabolical intentions.

From what I have read it was so many inches of rain here and so many of inches of rain over there, well, those inches of rain rain come together and become a foot or more of water. So if a person who knew the area, who could add two numbers together, could have adverted this tragedy. I think I read, the local authorities, sounded an alarm but it was too late.

The moron in the White House, Doge?, is to blame for this tragedy.

[Silent Type]

1. Sounds to me, the forecast was accurate enough. But local officials were asleep or something.

Local officials are trumpsters.

[Igel]

6. But it wasn't.

In fact, it was wrong.

Let's not say the NWS is 100% accurate. This was a stalled storm cell. It if stalled 20 miles north or south, this wouldn't have happened. If it hadn't stalled, this wouldn't have happened. If it had stalled an hour later, it might have happed, but elsewhere.

Hey, we're a tech-based society. Got a thermometer that's accurate to 1 degree. Probably not. I have one. How about to 0.1 degree. I got none. You? C'mon!

0.01 degree? Look we can measure temperature to at least 0.000 000 0001 degree. And you can't manage 0.1 degree, and probably not really 1 degree?

Remember that "margin of error" and "experimental error" from high school science. It doesn't go away. Ever.

When the NWS says a forecast, there's always error. Always. Systemic or random. Error bars simply are. You don't see them on a forecast it's because the science-y PTB don't think you can handle them.

Internally, the NWS science folk see the error bars. Inside, good--success. Outside, fix the model. But that's hard and above their paygrade. Way above. You got your BS? Hey, nice. Add at least 4 years + PhD thesis, get back to me. Suddenly that BS holder seems very middle-schoolish. And where are we? Ugh.

But forecasts have error bars. I think their forecast was outside the 95% probability error bar, but you know, that just means that about 1 time in 20 the error bars are wrong. Which time? Why not this time.

Locals have their own errors, but NOAA's errors are their own. I think those errors are reasonable and close to what a reasonable observer should expect--don't me wrong. A science person told there's error in his/her/ research simply says, "Yes, of course. Where?" and leans forward to maybe learn something.

[Silent Type]

7. Whether within acceptable limits or not, the forecasts were accurate enough to spur action sooner.

I loved the comment of one local emergency management official: “We’ve just had the 4th hundred year storm in the past hundred years.”

[brush]

2. Not diabolical, just stupid DOGE/trump cut, cut, cut to look like...

they're cutting government waste...in other words, they're morons who don't know what the fuck they're doing.

[canetoad]

3. What a great question

Why indeed does he want to hurt farmers?

I reckon he thinks the weather is only for protesters and the unemployed who in his mind, laze around all day.

[modrepub]

4. Some Thoughts

I know someone who has classmates in the NWS. Deferred retirement has left a lot of holes in many of the regional weather offices. Staffing is so short they are shifting folks around to cover holes. A regional weather service office probably has less than 20 people working in it who work in shifts. I can tell you the staffing shortage has left many offices with not enough trained personnel to collect the routine data used in the weather forecast models.

If you are the cynical type, one could suspect folks are out to ruin the NWS because it provides largely free forecasts and weather alerts. Lots of private weather companies would love to provide you forecasts and alerts, for a price.

Weather forecasting is a highly non-linear science. The equations that govern the atmosphere are such that even with double precision computers, a blip in the calculation out to 16 digits can make a difference in the forecast. It's called the "wings of butterfly" effect. Even with better computers, computational errors can and will lead to inaccurate forecasts

As I said, the Earth's atmosphere is a highly non-linear system. Raise temperatures a bit and you can get lots of feedback especially due to increases in energy from latent heating (condensing water vapor). So one impact of global warming is it leads to greater flood risks, which may be another factor here.

[Alice Kramden]

5. What you stated is spot on

If you are the cynical type, one could suspect folks are out to ruin the NWS because it provides largely free forecasts and weather alerts. Lots of private weather companies would love to provide you forecasts and alerts, for a price.

Thanks for the insight - it had not occurred to me, but of course

[Ms. Toad]

8. The alarm was sounded.

Predicted rainfall kept being revised upward as more data became available - up to 20". By shortly after midnight both AccuWeather and the National Weather Service predicted massive flash flooding and urged evacuation. (Incidentally - very similar to the 1987 flood which also killed several campers.)

The catch seems to be getting that evacuation message to the camp.

There appears to be no cell service (and while campers were prohibited from phones/internet, staff had them). Cell phones capable of receiving an emergency broadcast are no good if there is no cell phone service.

It isn't clear that an emergency weather broadcast was made - even if cell phones have service, if no message is sent they won't receive it.

What backup plans did area make after an eerily similar flood in 1987 (and several earlier ones). The area is filled with summer camps - did anyone bother to set up a plan to call these camps in the event flash floods were predicted? I have vivid memories of a similar "100-year" flood in the '60s. We weren't in a heavily populated area - but we used the information from that flood to plan for the depth of the basement in the house we built a few years later to ensure it would stay dry in. When the weather gods give you a trial run, you'd best not ignore it.