In the aftermath of catastrophic flooding in the Hill Country, the performance of local National Weather Service offices has become the focus of intense scrutiny. Could NWS offices have better alerted the public to flood dangers? Did federal staffing cuts hinder the service’s ability to do its job?
Democratic legislators in D.C. have already called for investigations, and Texas state lawmakers are planning a special legislative session that will focus, in part, on answering those questions.
But as politicians and outside experts weigh in, the voices of NWS meteorologists themselves typically have been absent from the conversation, possibly because current weather service employees may not feel free to speak publicly.
To fill that void, KUT News reached out to recently retired career NWS meteorologists to learn how they think staffing cuts and hiring freezes have impacted the service’s mission to forecast and warn the public about extreme weather.