Has US Government abbreviations contributed to the Texas tragedy?

As a result of the fatal floods in Texas, some Democrats have warned of the “consequences” of Trump’s administration to the federal government’s workforce, including meteorologists, such as Senator Chris Murphy says: “Exactly time prediction helps to avoid fatal disasters.”

The proposal is that cuts can impede the ability of the National Meteorological Service (NWS), the government agency that provides weather forecasts in the United States – to adequate floods and raise the alarm.

But White House press secretary Carolyn Levitt said on Monday: “These offices (NWS) were well served … so all the claims to the opposite are completely false.”

The BBC Verify examined the impact of the abbreviations of President Trump in this area, and although there was a reduction in the workforce in NWS, the experts we talked to have said that the staff on the floods in Texas seemed to have been adequate.

Trump Administration has suggested a 25% discount For the current annual budget of the National Administration for the Ocean and Atmosphere (NOAA) of $ 6.1 billion (£ 4.4 billion). NOAA is the agency that runs NWS.

This would Enter the financial year in 2026 Which begins in October this year – so these specific cuts would not contribute to the Texas tragedy.

However, NWS staff levels have already been reduced separately by the Trump administration administration since January since January.

The Ministry of Government Efficiency (Doge), managed earlier by Elon Musk, offered voluntary cuts known as buying, as well as early pensions of the workers of the federal government. It also completed the contracts of most of those who were on the probationary period.

As a result, about 200 people in NWS took a voluntary redundancy and 300 elected early retirement, according to Tom Fahi, legislative director of the Union of the National Service for Meteorological Officers. Another 100 people were eventually fired from the service, he said.

A total of NWS has lost 600 of its approximately 4200 employees, says G -N Fahy, causing several offices across the country to work without the necessary staff.

In April, The News Agency at the Associated Press He said they had seen data made up of NWS employees showing that half of his offices had a free percentage of 20% – double the percentage of a decade earlier.

However, climate experts have told the BBC to check that NWS forecasts and flood warnings last week in Texas are as adequate as it can be expected.

“The forecasts and warnings were played normally. The challenge with this event was that it was very difficult to predict this type of extreme, localized rainfall,” says the forests of forests, a civil and environmental engineering assistant at Rice University in Texas.

And Andy Hazelton, a climateologist who models the hurricane trails for noaa, until he was fired during the cuts in February, says: “I don’t think staff problems directly contribute to this event. They took out the clocks and warnings.”

However, some experts suggest that staff cuts may impede the ability of NWS’s local offices in Texas from coordinating with local emergency services.

“There is a real question whether the communication of weather information arose in a way that is non -optimal,” says Daniel Suin, a climatologist at the University of California in Los Angeles.

“The impact can be partially prevented if some of the people in the meteorological service responsible for the creation of these communications were still hired – who were not in some of these local offices,” he adds.

The offices of San Angelo and San Antonio, which cover the areas affected by the flood, had some existing vacancies.

For example, San Antonio’s office website lists several positions as freeIncluding two meteorologists.

The NWS Union Legislative Director told the BBC to check that a senior hydrologist, a scientist specializing in floods, was lacking in the office of San Angelo.

The San Antonio office also lacked a “warning coordinating meteorologist”, which coordinates communications between local offices for forecasting and emergency management services in communities, said G -N -Fahy.

However, he noted that both offices temporarily raised their staff in anticipation of a dangerous meteorological event that is characteristic of these circumstances.

“The NWS time forecasting services in Austin/San Antonio and San Angelo, Texas, had additional on -call forecasts during the catastrophic flood,” NWS spokesman Eric Grow said in a statement to the BBC. “All forecasts and warnings were issued in a timely manner,” she added.

NWS meteorologist Jason Runian, who covers the San Antonio region, also said in a statement that when the office would usually have an on -call forecasts during clear weather, they had up to five staff.

Asked on Sunday whether government cuts left key vacancies uninformed in NWS, President Trump told reporters: “No, they didn’t.”

In video shared thousands of times in social mediaAmerican meteorologist John Morales said: “There is a 20% reduction in the leakage of balloons for the weather, it shoots … What we are starting to see is that the quality of the forecasts is getting worse.”

Some social media users cite the words of G -N Morales as proof that budget reduction has limited the ability of forecasts to anticipate extreme meteorological events such as floods in Kerr, Texas.

Meteorological balloons are an important tool used by meteorologists to collect meteorological data – from temperatures, to humidity, pressure or wind speed – from the upper atmosphere.

In the US, NWS stations usually release them twice a day.

In a series of public statements published by February, NWS confirmed that it either stopped or reduced the launch of meteorological balloons in at least 11 places across the country, attributing to the lack of staff in local offices to predict the weather.

However, there is no evidence to suggest that any of these changes have been influenced directly on the launch of meteorological balloons in the areas affected by floods in Texas.

Publicly available data show thatDuring the floods, the launch of balloons of the meteorological balloons were carried out according to a plan in Del Rio, the launch station closest to the flood epicenter, collecting data that informed the weather forecasts that experts say are as adequate as they can be.

Additional studies of Kumar Malchotra