Here's a detailed timeline of the main events and a cast of characters based on the provided sources:
Timeline of Events
Pre-1800s:
The federal government begins playing a central role in weather forecasting in the U.S.
1950s:
The Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii begins tracking atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, providing decades of evidence of anthropogenic climate change.
1964:
NOAA's National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) is founded in Norman, Oklahoma, later developing breakthrough radar technologies for tornado and severe weather warnings, and the FLASH program for flash flood forecasting.
1976 (July 31):
The Big Thompson River in Colorado experiences a deadly flash flood, killing 144 people. This disaster leads to the development of awareness tools like "Climb to Safety" signs and stimulates research leading to commonplace flash flood warning practices.
1980s:
The 10-year summer average of NOAA's climate extreme index is 58% lower than it is in 2025, indicating a significant increase in extreme weather events.
1987:
Central Texas experiences deadly flooding.
2016:
NOAA's Flooded Locations And Simulated Hydrographs Project (FLASH) is made operational, doubling the skill of the legacy weather service flash flood guidance system.
2020:
AccuWeather press release claims that forecasts and warnings provided by private companies are more reliable than those by the NWS.
2021:
A crippling winter storm ravages Texas, prompting Senator Ted Cruz to famously flee to Cancun.The typically temperate Pacific Northwest and western Canada experience a killer heat wave, demonstrating extreme weather events occurring in unexpected locations. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick states that Satellogic is "uniquely positioned to dominate the Earth Observation industry" due to its ability to offer real-time natural disaster imagery. Cantor Fitzgerald, run by Howard Lutnick, pays a $6.75 million fine to the SEC for misleading statements to investors about Satellogic and another company.
2023:
A hearing focuses on the future of NOAA, where Neil Jacobs argues for the agency to rely "more heavily on the commercial sector."
Vermont is inundated by floods (also in 2024).
2024 (October 1):
The remnants of Hurricane Helene blow into inland North Carolina, affecting areas that previously considered hurricanes a coastal problem.
2025 (January):
The Trump administration takes office and begins implementing proposed cuts to federal agencies.
2025 (February):
AP-NORC polls conducted in February show that about 2 in 10 Americans had experienced major flooding in recent years, and about 7 in 10 of those believed climate change was at least a partial cause.
Approximately 800 NOAA employees (about 10% of the workforce) depart due to mass firings of probationary employees and voluntary retirements, initiated by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which Elon Musk helped create.
Howard Lutnick submits an ethics plan indicating he would request a waiver to participate in matters affecting his family's business while divesting. The NOAA's Office of Space Commerce loses about one-third of its staff in DOGE-facilitated layoffs.
2025 (April):
The warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service office in San Antonio retires early due to an offered retirement package.
2025 (May):
Governor Josh Stein's budget request for North Carolina pegs Helene damages and recovery needs at approximately $59 billion.
Democrat Lizzie Fletcher hosts an event with NOAA Administrator Dr. Rick Spinrad, Space City Weather meteorologist Eric Berger, and Harris County Emergency Management Coordinator Mark Sloan, expressing concerns about hurricane season readiness.
The Washington Post reports that for the month ending May 26, 17% of all U.S. balloon launches that should have occurred did not, mainly due to NOAA staffing losses.
Thirty National Weather Service offices are lacking their most experienced official, the meteorologist-in-charge.
2025 (June):
AP-NORC polls conducted in June find that Americans generally have high confidence in the National Weather Service and local weather reports. About 7 in 10 Americans believe the federal government should have a "major role" in tracking weather events and warning people. Just over half (56%) believe the government should have a key role in combating climate change to prevent extreme weather from worsening.
President Trump signs a Republican "big beautiful" reconciliation bill into law.
The Trump administration's proposed NOAA budget for FY2026 is released, detailing significant cuts to climate and weather research, including the elimination of OAR, the closure of all NOAA labs, and a 27% overall budget reduction.
Senator Ted Cruz inserts language into the Republican spending bill, eliminating a $150 million fund for accelerating improvements in weather forecasting and $50 million in NOAA grants for climate-related impacts.
Howard Lutnick's most recent ethics filing from June 19 indicates he is still selling his holdings in Cantor Fitzgerald.
2025 (July 3):
A flood watch is issued for a swath of central Texas, including Kerr County, at 1:18 PM.
The Texas Division of Emergency Management activates rescue teams and bumps up its readiness level.
2025 (July 4, early morning):
The deadliest U.S. flash flood from a thunderstorm complex in nearly a half-century sweeps through the Hill Country of Texas, killing at least 89 people (later updated to over 129), including 27 from Camp Mystic.
At 1:14 AM, the National Weather Service pushes out its first flash flood warning for central Kerr County.
At 4:03 AM, federal forecasters issue a "flash flood emergency" for south-central Kerr County, using the term reserved for "exceedingly rare" cases where lives are at risk.
By 4:35 AM, the NWS office receives reports of low-level flooding from the Kerr County sheriff's office, 3 hours and 21 minutes after the first warning.
At 5:34 AM, forecasters push out a second flash flood emergency alert for east-central Kerr County, warning of a "large and deadly flood wave.”
Around 5:30 AM, Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring is woken by a phone call from the city manager, informing him of flooding downtown.
Around 5:30 AM, the Kerr County Sheriff’s Office and Kerr County Facebook pages post warnings about "DANGEROUS FLOODING NOW.”
At 6:00 AM, Mayor Herring receives an alert on his phone from the CodeRED system.
2025 (July 5):
Tropical Storm Chantal forms and continues through the weekend.
Officials continue recovery efforts at Camp Mystic along the Guadalupe River.
Michael Lowry comments on the Texas tragedy and Tropical Storm Chantal.
2025 (July 6):
Senator Ted Cruz is seen visiting the Parthenon in Athens with his wife, Heidi, a day after the Texas flash flood.
Alan Gerard posts an updated, more reasoned summary about the Texas Hill Country tragedy and Chantal's landfall in South Carolina.
2025 (July 7):
Jeff Masters' commentary "Cuts to NOAA increase the risk of deadly weather tragedies" is published, highlighting the impact of proposed NOAA budget cuts.
New York Times publishes letters about the Texas flood tragedy, linking it to climate change and budget cuts.
KCCI/Zane Satre releases details of the new NOAA budget, confirming plans to eliminate most weather and climate research.
Dani Tietz publishes "Trump Administration Moves to Slash NOAA, Dismantle FEMA," detailing budget cuts and privatization plans.
Kristi Noem states that the NWS system "has been neglected for years" and needs upgrading, and President Trump "got to work on it when he came into office.”
2025 (July 8):
POLITICO publishes "Flood predictions could worsen when Trump’s cuts take hold," emphasizing the delayed impact of proposed cuts.
Seth Borenstein publishes "The US faces more frequent extreme weather events, but attitudes and actions aren’t keeping up," discussing the societal lag in adapting to climate change.
Emily Foxhall publishes "Weather warnings gave officials a 3 hour, 21 minute window to save lives in Kerr County. What happened then remains unclear," detailing the timeline of warnings and local response.
The Houston Chronicle Editorial Board publishes "Here’s how Trump can prove he cares about Texas," calling for Trump to reverse cuts and support the weather service.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt describes Democrats' assertions linking Trump's cuts to the Texas floods as "depraved and despicable," stating the floods were "an act of God.”
Kristi Noem doubles down on her theme of neglected technology in the NWS, stating President Trump recognized the need for upgrades.
2025 (July 9):
AP News publishes "Trump appointees have ties to companies that may benefit from privatized weather forecasts," highlighting potential conflicts of interest.
An update on Hurricane Helene floods in North Carolina indicates a confirmed death toll of 108 and estimated damages of approximately $59 billion for North Carolina alone.
2025 (mid-November):
The FEMA Review Council, co-chaired by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, is expected to submit recommendations for FEMA's restructuring or elimination.
2025 (December):
President Trump announces plans to phase out FEMA by this month, immediately following the Atlantic hurricane season.
FY 2026 (Proposed):
Trump administration's proposed budget for NOAA would eliminate OAR, zero out over $700 million of spending, and fire several hundred scientists and staff.
Funding for the Mauna Loa laboratory would be shuttered.
Funding for Regional Climate Data and Information, Climate Competitive Research, National Sea Grant College Program, Sea Grant Aquaculture Research, and National Oceanographic Partnership Program would not be funded.
NOAA would no longer support climate research grants.
All NOAA labs, including the National Severe Storms Laboratory, would be closed.
The Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL), instrumental in improving hurricane forecasts, would be closed.
NASA's science division would be cut in half, with an $8 billion cut for future NOAA satellites and termination of existing climate-monitoring satellites.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) water resources program, including the network of river gauges, would be cut by 22%.
The Landsat account on X and information for Landsat Next would be deleted/archived.
The plan to consolidate NOAA's suite of high-resolution weather models into a single forecasting system would be revived.
Government Officials & Political Figures:
Donald Trump
U.S. President. His administration has proposed and implemented significant budget cuts to NOAA and FEMA, aiming to privatize weather forecasting and shift disaster response responsibilities to states. He has been criticized for these cuts, especially in the wake of the Texas floods, and has dismissed linking the floods to his administration's policies as "depraved lies.”
Ted Cruz
U.S. Senator from Texas. He has actively pushed for reduced funding for weather forecasting at NOAA, inserting language into a Republican spending bill to eliminate key research grants. He has also drawn criticism for being on vacation in Greece during the deadly Texas floods and for previously questioning the scientific reality of climate change.
Kristi Noem
Homeland Security Secretary. Co-chairs the FEMA Review Council tasked with recommending the agency's restructuring or elimination. She has publicly stated that the National Weather Service's technology is "ancient" and needs upgrading, and that FEMA needs to be "eliminated as it exists today and remade into a responsive agency.”
Pete Hegseth
Defense Secretary. Co-chairs the FEMA Review Council with Kristi Noem.
Howard Lutnick
Commerce Secretary. He has ties to companies that stand to benefit from the privatization of government weather forecasting, including a controlling interest in BGC Group (which operates a weather derivatives marketplace) and a significant stake in Satellogic (a satellite company offering natural disaster imagery). He recently left his financial firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, in the control of his adult sons.
Greg Abbott
Governor of Texas. He has publicly stated that President Trump "loves Texas" and is "deeply concerned" about the families affected by the floods. He acknowledged the NWS warnings but stated "No one would know that would be a 30-foot-high tsunami-ball of water.”
Joe Herring
Mayor of Kerrville, Texas. He was unaware of the severe flooding until he received a call from the city manager around 5:30 AM on July 4th. Two of his close friends died in the flooding.
Rob Kelly
Kerr County Judge. He stated, "We didn’t know this flood was coming" regarding the July 4th Texas floods.
Dan Patrick
Lieutenant Governor of Texas. He stated that the regional director for TDEM personally called local officials to discuss the brewing storm before the Texas floods.
Nim Kidd
Chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management (TDEM). He stated that a state rescue task force, military vehicles, and aircraft were stationed in the region before the Texas floods.
Lizzie Fletcher
Democrat policymaker from Houston. She hosted an event in May 2025 to express concerns about hurricane season readiness amidst federal cuts.
Peter Welch
U.S. Senator from Vermont. He agrees that FEMA is too slow to help communities rebuild and has introduced legislation to shift more power to state and local officials in the rebuilding process.
Russell Vought
Trump's budget director and primary Project 2025 architect. He developed the White House's 2026 spending plan which proposes $8 billion in cuts for future NOAA satellites.
Scientists, Meteorologists & Experts:
Alan Gerard
Meteorologist and former NOAA official, former director of the analysis and understanding branch at the National Severe Storms Laboratory. He has criticized the proposed budget cuts, stating they signal NOAA's intent to "completely abandon climate science" and are "destroying the research apparatus that would actually upgrade technology and provide more advance notice.”
Rick Spinrad
Former NOAA Administrator under President Joe Biden. He has warned that Trump's cuts could lead to "lives being lost" and property damage, describing the proposed cuts as potentially making future weather predictions far less accurate than the Texas flood forecasts.
Michael Oppenheimer
Princeton University climate scientist. He states that climate change is making extreme weather events more frequent and intense, and that society is not acting with enough alarm. He warns that cuts to federal agencies are "destroying the capability we have that we’re going to need more and more in the future.”
Marshall Shepherd
University of Georgia meteorology professor and former president of the American Meteorological Society. He notes that people tend to base decisions on past weather events, leading to an "overly optimistic" outlook despite worsening storms.
Kim Klockow McClain
Extreme weather social scientist at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. She studies communicating disaster warnings and risk, emphasizing that the message needs to be that "this is a shifting baseline" for nuisance flooding.
Susan Cutter
Co-director of the Hazards Vulnerability & Resilience Institute at the University of South Carolina. She attributes people's unpreparedness to a "psychological mechanism to protect us that it can’t happen to me."
Lori Peek
Director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado. She warns that surviving past extreme events can lead to dangerous overconfidence, as the "next time is not going to look like the last time.”
Andrew Dessler
Climate scientist at Texas A&M University. He states that every weather event now carries some influence from climate change due to added carbon in the atmosphere, and that basic physics tells us climate change "very likely made this event stronger.”
Daniel Swain
Climate scientist at UCLA. He noted that the accurate forecasts for the Texas floods were made possible by NOAA's high-resolution weather models, and warns that eliminating research and observation functions will "100 percent be responsible for costing lives.”
William B. Gail
Former president of the American Meteorological Society. He warns that cuts to NASA and NOAA could lead to a "train wreck" for weather forecasting.
John Sokich
Former Director of Congressional Affairs for the National Weather Service. He believes that if NOAA's Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research is not reinstated, the development of new weather forecasting tools and models will “stop."
Brian LaMarre
Retired meteorologist-in-charge of the National Weather Service forecast office in Tampa, Florida. He highlights the consequences of a vacant meteorologist-in-charge position, as it is the primary person briefing elected officials and emergency managers.
Mary Ann Tierney
Recently resigned acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. She states, "We are not witnessing a reimagining of federal disaster response — we are watching its demolition.”
Alice C. Hill
Former National Security Council official for climate resilience and security issues (Obama administration), now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. She warns that cuts to the Weather Service and data collection will "degrade the accuracy of forecasts.”
Neil Jacobs
Trump's pick to lead NOAA, previously chief atmospheric scientist for Panasonic Weather Solutions. He has been a vocal proponent of privatization in weather forecasting and a consultant for companies with weather data contracts with NOAA.
Taylor Jordan
Trump's nominee for another top NOAA post, a lobbyist with weather-related clients including Spire Global, Lynker, and AccuWeather.
Keith Robinson
Former director of the U.S. Geological Survey's New England Water Science Center. He warns that with proposed cuts, there will be "less data and fewer people to read it," and states/municipalities/private companies will have to pay for data.
Erica Cei
Spokesperson for the National Weather Service. She provided details on the timing of flood warnings for the Texas floods.
Bob Henson
Meteorologist and journalist with Yale Climate Connections. He states that the NWS did all it could in issuing a flood watch "that far ahead of an event." He also highlights the "last mile" problem in weather alerts.
Avantika Gori
Assistant professor of civil & environmental engineering at Rice University and flood risk expert. She suggests that "alert fatigue" and misunderstanding the difference between a "watch" and "warning" can lead to complacency.
Erik Nielsen
Instructional assistant professor at Texas A&M University. He notes that the incongruity between warnings and what people saw on the ground (e.g., river barely rising) could cause people not to take action.
Other Individuals:
Valerie Peters
Individual staying at a Kerrville RV campsite (Jellystone Park) during the Texas floods. She woke to the rainfall, saw emergency notifications, shut off the sound, and went back to bed, unaware of the severity.
Jane Ragsdale
Director of the Heart O’ The Hills camp, died in the Texas floods.
Dick Eastland
One of the owners of Camp Mystic, died in the Texas floods.
Katy Frank
Former computer scientist at the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab who lost her job on February 28, 2025, due to Trump administration layoffs.
Organizations & Entities:
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
A U.S. federal agency responsible for weather forecasting, climate research, and ocean management. The Trump administration has proposed deep budget cuts to NOAA, particularly its Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR).
Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR)
NOAA's primary research arm, responsible for climate, weather, and ocean laboratories and cooperative institutes. The Trump administration's proposed FY2026 budget seeks to eliminate all funding for OAR.
National Weather Service (NWS)
A component of NOAA responsible for providing weather forecasts and warnings. It has faced staffing cuts and concerns about its ability to maintain operations due to the Trump administration's policies.
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
The U.S. federal agency responsible for coordinating disaster response and recovery. The Trump administration has plans to significantly scale down or eliminate FEMA, shifting more responsibility to states.
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
A scientific agency of the U.S. government. Its water resources program, which includes the network of river gauges essential for flood monitoring, faces proposed budget cuts.
NASA
The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Trump administration's proposed budget would severely cut funding for its Earth science division and satellites used for weather prediction and climate monitoring.
Camp Mystic
A Christian summer camp for schoolgirls located near the Guadalupe River in central Texas. It was severely impacted by the July 4, 2025 flash flood, with dozens of fatalities among campers and staff.
Project 2025
A conservative policy blueprint, co-authored by Russell Vought and published by the Heritage Foundation, which advocates for significant changes to federal agencies like NOAA and FEMA, including privatization of weather forecasting.
AccuWeather
A commercial forecast provider that has claimed its forecasts are more reliable than the NWS.
Cantor Fitzgerald
A financial firm previously run by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, with interests in weather and climate, including a weather derivatives marketplace and a stake in Satellogic.
Satellogic
A satellite company offering natural disaster imagery, in which Cantor Fitzgerald holds a significant stake.
Spire Global
A company with weather data contracts with NOAA.
Lynker
A company with weather data contracts with NOAA.
Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)
An entity that Elon Musk helped create, which facilitated February 2025 layoffs at NOAA.