MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Texas Governor Greg Abbott says state agencies will not stop recovery and rescue operations until every missing person is found. This after more than 100 people are known to have died after flash flooding in central Texas, most of them in Kerr County. The floodwaters rose so fast that the National Weather Service posted what it says was an exceedingly rare flash flood emergency. And between 4 and 6 a.m. on July 4, with up to a foot of rain falling, the Guadalupe River surged with water levels as high as 30 feet. But we're still wondering why those warnings evidently didn't get to the people who needed to hear them.
Tom Di Liberto is a meteorologist and former public affairs specialist with NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He's now with the nonprofit news organization Climate Central. So we're going to put the question to him, and he's on the line with us now. Good morning, Mr. Di Liberto. Thanks for joining us.
TOM DI LIBERTO: Thank you for having me.
MARTIN: I realize we've been asking this since this whole tragedy happened, but I'd love to get your take on what caused this huge surge in the river. And I want to be clear. You haven't worked in Texas. But from what you've read and know, what were the factors that made this particular event so dangerous?
DI LIBERTO: Yeah, sure. This is a nightmarish scenario for any meteorologist, especially those in the Hill Country, where you have very slow-moving thunderstorms taking advantage of a very, very wet atmosphere and dropping an absolute ton of rainfall basically near the headwaters or upriver along the river that basically then would flow down that river, but happening not only on a holiday weekend but happening overnight in a rural area where it's difficult to get the word out. It was basically a confluence of factors, also including the fact that it took advantage of a warmer-than-average Gulf of Mexico. And we know that extreme precipitation events like this are also influenced by climate change.
MARTIN: How much advanced warning would the National Weather Service have gotten? I'm just asking, like, what are the tools? What's the time frame in which you would be able to issue an emergency warning for something like this?
DI LIBERTO: So it's incredibly difficult to forecast the amount of rainfall that fell during this storm. Over 15 inches of rain fell in certain places. But what can happen ahead of time is you can say a broad area is expecting to see 4 to 7 inches of rain. And then while the event is actually occurring, you can kind of pinpoint exactly where that extreme heavy rainfall is occurring.
So there were alerts 24 hours ahead of time of just broader risks to floods. And then as the event started taking place, I believe the first flash flood warning came out a little after midnight - I think 1 a.m. that day. So you can kind of make these forecasts a little bit more specific as you move through. But the problem is a forecast is only as good, a watch is only as good, a warning is only as good as people's ability to actually get it, to receive it and to understand what to do when they actually do get it.
MARTIN: Yeah, to that end, you know, a lot of people, including Democratic Congressman Joaquin Castro on this program yesterday, have called for an investigation into the warnings that preceded these floods. So in general, how should this have worked?
DI LIBERTO: Right. So what happened in this case was that when the weather service issued flash flood warnings at 1 a.m., and then when they issued updates and when they issued a flash flood emergency, it basically set into motion an automated system that would send out those messages to your phone that make those loud noises. But again, it's happening overnight. And people don't necessarily receive them at the time that they're sent. And also, in rural areas, it's hard to get.
So other places around the country who are prone to flash flooding have put in other sorts of methods to warn their residents before a flash flood. That could include things like sirens. We know about tornado sirens. These are basically flash flood sirens. They're louder. They can get to people in rural areas and near these creeks and in these ravines. And there are other methods where you can basically make sure that you can kind of reach out. But especially for these rural areas, where it's difficult to reach everybody in time, sirens can provide a very useful way of getting the word out quickly that hopefully can awaken people to the risk, even during the overnight hours.
MARTIN: So I want to mention you're one of the hundreds of NOAA employees who were laid off in February. The National Weather Service is part of NOAA. Given your expertise, if you were advising the government on where to look for areas of improvement, what would you suggest?
DI LIBERTO: You know, I think the weather forecasts, while not perfect, they were good enough to be able to communicate necessarily the risk. But I think the issue, what we saw here, was a breakdown in understanding and communication between the weather forecasts and then the folks on the ground.
Whenever you have an event like this with such a horrible loss of life, it's a failure. It's a failure. But importantly, it's a system failure. I'm not pointing fingers at any individual person. It is a system failure. And that involves not only making the forecast, the ability to communicate the forecast, but also the understanding on the ground with the county officials, emergency managers, state-level officials to put in action plans that they have.
So I think the key thing here in order to improve the situations not only in Texas, but in flash flood-prone places across the entire country, is to make sure that the National Weather Service has the staff needed to basically create and form those relationships with local officials so that the next time this happens, there's a clear line of communication between the weather service and elsewhere.
MARTIN: We have to leave it there for now. That's Tom Di Liberto. He's a meteorologist. He's formerly with NOAA. He's now with Climate Central. Thank you.
DI LIBERTO: Thanks. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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