New York officials are highlighting recent investments they’ve made to improve the state’s response to severe weather events, and blasting the federal government for cutting funding to support the programs in light of this month’s deadly floods in Texas.
Gov. Kathy Hochul on Friday visited the University at Albany and directed officials there to lead a tabletop exercise based on the recent disaster. The fast-moving storms left more than 100 people dead, including dozens of people at a summer camp near the Guadalupe River.
“My question is, with all the resources we have here, is there something we would've done differently?” Hochul said. “We've got a lot invested here. We have a lot of talented people, a lot of expertise. How do we make sure that fate never befalls people in our own state?”
The Democratic governor toured the State Weather Risk Communication Center and met with officials who operate the New York State Mesonet, a network of specialized weather stations around the state. Hochul and U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer criticized the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for canceling a $3 million grant that funds the Mesonet.
“In a world with increasingly frequent and unpredictable severe weather, these new tools will provide our community safety professionals with unparalleled information to make the fastest, most well-informed decisions when disasters strike, helping to alert communities of imminent threats and better protect lives and property,” Schumer, a Democrat from Brooklyn, wrote in a letter.
A DHS spokesperson said the department has implemented “additional controls to ensure that all grant money going out is consistent with law and does not go to fraud, waste or abuse.” The spokesperson pointed to New York City’s use of federal money to pay for the care of undocumented migrants at specialized relief centers, including the now-shuttered Roosevelt Hotel.
Hochul used her visit to tout the State Weather Risk Communication Center, a first-in-the nation endeavor that opened in 2023 and will be fully staffed this month. Its goal is to translate a trove of real-time weather data into actionable digests that are shared with state and local emergency managers.
During a tour on Wednesday, center Director Nick Bassill said the Texas floods highlighted the need to help officials and managers make quicker decisions in fast-changing storms. A quartet of meteorologists in a windowless room reviewed maps and charts, poring over temperature readings and radar images of the vastly different climates that comprise New York state.
“I am very passionate about connecting the weather and its impact,” Bassill said. “I view us as sort of translators.”
The office will grow to its full capacity just as the federal government is making deep cuts to the National Weather Service — and as climate change brings more severe storms to the state.
In Texas, the National Weather Service issued a flood watch on the afternoon of July 3. A watch indicates a hazardous weather event is possible, and is generally meant to prompt preparations. Its first flash flood warning, which indicates conditions are imminent, came out at 1:14 a.m. on July 4. It’s unclear how well officials heeded those warnings in the overnight hours of a federal holiday.
Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said he wasn’t notified about the flooding until at least 4 a.m., when the Guadalupe River was already two dozen feet above flood stage near Camp Mystic, the Wall Street Journal reported.
A former county commissioner told NPR that he believed lives could have been saved if a siren system had been installed near the river. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, said that in hindsight, summer camps should have been evacuated.
Bassill said his center isn’t staffed 24/7, but meteorologists work late during expected storms. That can provide helpful support.
“We know what areas are going to be most susceptible to flash floods on a given day,” he said. “So, ideally we can do things like pick out the campgrounds that are within that zone and email state parks and let them know: ‘These dozen campsites are going to be possibly susceptible to flash flooding.’”
New York got serious about weather alerts in 2011. Tropical Storms Lee and Irene dumped rain across Upstate areas, causing extensive flooding in the northern Catskills Mountains and Adirondack high peaks. A year later, Superstorm Sandy caused extensive damage to New York City and Long Island.
“There were huge gaps,” said Chris Thorncroft, director of the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center at the University at Albany. “ We didn't know how much rain was falling.”
The result was the New York State Mesonet — a network with 127 stations an average of 17 miles apart that provide data every five minutes. The stations measure actual rainfall, wind speed, temperature and solar radiation.
Around three dozen other states have mesonets. Texas has two. But Bassill, while working on New York’s system, became concerned the data wasn’t getting where it needed to go. He helped develop the idea for the Weather Risk Communications Center, a first-in-the nation operation that builds on the troves of new data.
There have already been several cases where the system has worked. While piloting the Weather Rick Communication Center in 2023, Bassill pushed the state to move water rescue resources to an area that had a high risk for flooding. The bet paid off when heavy rain washed out roads near West Point.
New York State Mesonet Director June Wang pointed to a Halloween rainstorm in 2019, in which about 4 inches of rain fell in five hours in the High Peaks. The Mesonet detected spikes in rainfall that prompted the National Weather Service to upgrade to a flash flood warning.
“That's how we serve the community and save lives,” Wang said.