Will the U.S. government cuts help Texas tragedy?

After the deadly flood in Texas, some Democrats warned that the Trump administration cuts the “consequences” of the federal government’s workforce, including meteorologists, and Sen. Chris Murphy said: “Accurate weather forecasts can help avoid fatal disasters.”

The recommendation is that cuts may hinder the National Weather Service (NWS)’s ability to provide weather forecasts in the United States to fully predict floods and increase alerts.

But White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday: “These (NWS) have good numbers of people in these offices … So any claim to the contrary is completely wrong.”

The BBC’s validation examines the impact of President Trump’s cuts in this area, and despite a reduced workforce in the Northwest, the experts we spoke with said staffing the flood in Texas seemed to be enough.

Trump administration Proposed cuts of 25% To the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) current annual budget of US$6.1 billion (£4.4 billion). NOAA is the agency responsible for the NWS.

This will Effective in fiscal year 2026 The event will begin this October – so these special cuts will not contribute to the Texas tragedy.

However, since January, the Trump administration’s efficiency drive has lowered the NW’s staffing level respectively.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), formerly run by Elon Musk, provided voluntary layoffs, called buyouts, and retired early to federal government workers. It also ends the contracts of most people who are on probation.

So, according to NWS Coalition Director Tom Fahy, about 200 people in the NWS voluntarily lay off employees, and 300 people chose to retire early. He said 100 people were eventually fired from the service.

Mr Fahy said NW lost 600 of its 600 employees in total, with several offices operating without the necessary staff, and he said.

April 2025, Associated Press News It said it has seen data collected by NWS employees showing half of its offices have a 20% vacancy rate, twice as many as a decade ago.

Nevertheless, climate experts told the BBC to verify that the NWS forecast and flood warning in Texas last week were sufficient.

“The predictions and warnings are both done in a normal way. The challenge of this event is that it is difficult to predict this type of extreme, localized rainfall,” said Avantika Gori, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University in Texas.

Climate scientist Andy Hazelton, who modeled NOAA’s hurricane pathway until he was fired during the layoffs in February, said: “I don’t think staffing issues directly led to this incident. They got watches and warnings.”

However, some experts suggest that staff layoffs may hinder the ability of local NWS offices in Texas to effectively coordinate with local emergency services.

“It’s a real question as to whether the spread of weather information happens in a suboptimal way,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

He added: “If the Meteorological Services are responsible for making some of these communications still be hired – they are not in some of these local offices, this impact may be partially avoided.”

There are reportedly some existing vacancies in the San Angelo and San Antonio offices covering areas affected by the flood.

For example, The San Antonio Office website lists several locationsincluding two meteorologists.

The director of the NSW union told the BBC that the San Angelo office was missing a senior hydrologist, a scientist specializing in flooding activities.

Mr Faxi said the San Antonio office also lacked “coordinated meteorologists” who coordinated communication between the local forecasting office and community emergency management services.

However, he noted that both offices temporarily increased staffing in anticipation of dangerous weather events, which is typical in this case.

“The NWS Weather Forecast Office in Austin/San Antonio and San Angelo, Texas also has other forecasters on duty during the catastrophic flooding,” NWS spokeswoman Erica Grow said in a statement to the BBC verification. She added: “All forecasts and warnings were issued in a timely manner.”

NWS meteorologist Jason Runyen, who covers the San Antonio area, said in a statement that in clear weather, the office usually has two forecasters on duty, who have “up to five employees.”

When asked Sunday whether the government cuts to stay in New Jersey’s main job openings unfilled, President Trump told reporters: “No, they don’t.”

In the video Shared thousands of times on social media“Weather balloons are being issued 20% lower, launches … what we are starting to see is the quality of the forecast being degraded.”

Some social media users have been pointing to Mr Morales’ words as evidence that budget cuts are limited, such as extreme weather events such as floods in Kerr County, Texas.

Climate balloons are an important tool used by meteorologists to collect weather data from the upper atmosphere – from temperature to humidity, pressure or wind speed.

In the United States, NWS radios usually push them out twice a day.

In a series of public statements since February, the NWS confirmed that it suspended or reduced temperature launches at at least 11 locations nationwide, due to a lack of staffing in local weather forecast offices.

However, there is no evidence that any of these changes directly affects the direct impact of launches in areas affected by the Texas flood.

Publicly available data displayIn the case of flooding, the launch of the weather balloon was carried out as planned by the Del Rio, which collects inspiring data that makes the weather forecasts as experts say are sufficient.