Early Warning Systems for Campers Would Be...Complicated

The missing, injured and dead in the Texas Hill Country are leading President Donald Trump to call for modernizing weather warning systems, but specialists say it's not going to be easy.

One of the most obvious things that could be done to help ensure the safety of at least some people should there be a similar future event would be to stretch the boundaries of weather forecasting.

Eric Berger, editor of Space City Weather says, "I think one of the big challenges with the Central Texas is that it hit after midnight on the beginning of a holiday, July 4th, and so a number of people weren't paying attention to weather.

"There are a couple of ways you might consider going about addressing that, one of them is giving more lead time in warnings.

"One thing people specifically can do is to make sure they have some way to receive weather alerts. Mobile devices have a setting where you can toggle on and off the alerts from the National Weather Service...and tornado warnings and flash flood warnings.

But Berger added, "It is a difficult situation and there is no quick fix. No one as of midnight going into July 4th really could have forecast the flash flooding and rising water that we saw on the Guadalupe River [in Kerr County] and how life-threatening it was."

He says there are a number of possibilities that could be considered for helping notify campers and residents along flood-prone rivers (and the Hill County includes some of the most flood-prone areas in the United States).

"In the old days in Houston we had tornado sirens, where the sirens would go off if there was flooding, so if the people, like in Kerr County, really wanted to invest they could put sensors into rivers so that when the water reached a certain level the siren could go off to alert people."

This analog solution in a digital world has its drawbacks, Berger says, because it costs a lot of money and some people will likely get annoyed if they get woken up by these sirens and the water doesn't even come close to their house.

The SpaceCityWeather.com meteorologist does not believe there was any negligence by the National Weather Service in delivering warnings to those in the Kerrville area.