“The catastrophic floods that struck central Texas on Friday show that accurate weather forecasts alone aren’t enough to save lives.
The National Weather Service issued timely warnings in advance of the deadly floods, meteorologists say. But they emphasized that forecasts are only one piece of an effective response — local authorities must be able to interpret weather warnings, communicate them to the public and help communities get to safety in time.”
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“In the case of last week’s floods, NWS began to escalate its warnings as much as 12 hours in advance, issuing flood watches beginning Thursday afternoon and upgrading to a flash flood warning by 1a.m. local time Friday, with more urgent warnings following into the early morning.”
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“The NWS office in San Angelo, which serves some of the hardest-hit communities, has no permanent meteorologist in charge, according to a list of vacancies published by the agency in June. And the Austin/San Antonio office, also serving flooded communities, is missing its warning coordination meteorologist and a science and operations officer, according to the same list.
These roles often serve as liaisons between NWS meteorologists and local authorities or emergency managers. Warning coordination meteorologists, in particular, help translate forecasts into usable action plans that can aid the local authorities who make decisions and evacuate communities as severe weather systems approach.
It’s unclear whether those vacancies have affected coordination with local authorities. Top meteorologists at NWS San Angelo and NWS Austin/San Antonio did not immediately respond to questions about whether the openings posed any challenges during the floods.
But Tom Fahy, legislative director at the union that represents NWS employees, said in an interview that vacancies at the Texas offices did not cause any problems during the floods.”
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” “The crux of this disaster is a failure of the last mile of communication,” Fahy said. “The forecasts went out, they communicated the forecasts, they disseminated the watches and warnings. And the dilemma we have is there was nobody listening at 4 o’clock in the morning for these watches and warnings.”
Most people who died in Friday’s floods were located in Kerr County, which does not have a warning system, according to Kelly, the Kerry County judge, at a Friday news conference.”
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“In an interview with The New York Times, Kelly suggested that warning systems are expensive and “taxpayers won’t pay for it.””
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” A policy on the camp’s website suggests that campers are not permitted to have cellphones, smart watches, iPads or other devices with touchscreens. It’s unclear whether counselors had access to devices equipped with emergency alerts or whether the camp had access to a NOAA weather radio.”
Republicans/Trump frontloaded the start of popular items in the big bill, and delayed unpopular items until after midterms, making it harder for voters to know what the people they are voting for actually did.
People are dying because they are not getting medicines that U.S. Aid used to bring them. Many of these medicines were already donated, but they go expired because U.S. Aid, who would be delivering them, was gutted by Trump, Elon Musk, and DOGE.
Israel leader Netanyahu has been saying Iran is weeks away from a nuke for over a decade.
Many Republicans called for the violence in LA to be crushed with military force and for Democrats to be removed from office, even though the violence and vandalism were contained and the Los Angeles Police Department had it under control.
When an immigrant kills someone, Republicans want to move and spend Heaven and Earth to limit all immigration and deport all illegals, devastating the lives of many people, but when Americans repeatedly murder, massacre, and assassinate fellow Americans with guns, they offer simple condolences.
“When it became clear that overdoses had risen dramatically in 2020, experts surmised that it had something to do with the social and economic disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the government’s response to it—an impression confirmed by subsequent research.
A 2024 study found that “volatile drug use during the COVID-19 pandemic was common, appeared to be driven by structural vulnerability, and was associated with increased overdose risk.” Another study published the same year concluded that “policies limiting in-person activities significantly increased” drug death rates.
If pandemic-related disruption drove the 2020 overdose spike, the return to normal life seems like a plausible explanation for subsequent decreases, although the death toll was still about 14 percent higher last year than it was in 2019. Last fall, University of North Carolina drug researcher Nabarun Dasgupta and his colleagues suggested other possible factors, including wider availability of naloxone, an opioid antagonist that quickly reverses overdoses.”
A story of police incompetence resulting in an innocent man killed.
“At that point, according to the complaint, the officers “finally announced themselves, and Kimberly Dotson told them that someone had shot her husband and requested their help.” She “did not realize even at that moment that the three police officers had killed her husband,” which she did not learn “until she was finally told eight hours later at the police station where she was detained.”
After the shooting, the lawsuit says, “the officers involved did not disclose to investigators that they were at the wrong address, which was the error leading to the tragic result and without which it would not have occurred.” The mistake “was discovered by other officers who arrived at the scene.””
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“In Garcia’s view, the late-night visit at the wrong house that resulted in Dotson’s death did not amount to such recklessness. He is not alone in concluding that police cannot reasonably be expected to make sure they are in the right place when they approach or even break into someone’s home.”
“Bondi’s most obvious mistake is equating potential overdoses with actual overdoses: She assumes that 258 million opioid-naive people would each have consumed two milligrams of fentanyl in one sitting. But Bondi also erroneously assumes that seizing 3,400 kilograms of fentanyl is the same as reducing U.S. fentanyl consumption by that amount.
That is obviously not true. Prohibition allows drug traffickers to earn a hefty risk premium, which gives them a strong incentive to find ways around any barriers the government manages to erect. Given all the places where drugs can be produced and all the ways they can be smuggled, it is not possible to “cut off the flow,” as politicians have been vainly promising to do for more than a century. The most they can realistically hope to accomplish through interdiction is higher retail prices resulting from increased costs imposed on drug traffickers.
That strategy is complicated by the fact that illegal drugs acquire most of their value close to the consumer. The cost of replacing destroyed crops and seized shipments is therefore relatively small, a tiny fraction of the “street value” trumpeted by law enforcement agencies. As you get closer to the retail level, the replacement cost rises, but the amount that can be seized at one time falls.
These challenges—which are compounded in the case of fentanyl, a highly potent drug that can be transported or shipped in small packages containing many doses—explain why interdiction never seems to have a significant and lasting impact on retail prices. From 1981 to 2012, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the average, inflation-adjusted retail price for a pure gram of heroin fell by 86 percent. During the same period, the average retail price for cocaine and methamphetamine fell by 75 percent and 72 percent, respectively. In 2021, the Drug Enforcement Administration reported that methamphetamine’s “purity and potency remain high while prices remain low,” that “availability of cocaine throughout the United States remains steady,” and that “availability and use of cheap and highly potent fentanyl has increased.””