As always, this is not to blame the victims! Quite the opposite; this truly was a sudden & massive event and occurred at worst possible time (middle of the night). But problem, once again, was not a bad weather prediction: it was one of "last mile" forecast/warning dissemination.

I am not aware of the details surrounding staffing levels at the local NWS offices involved, nor how that might have played into timing/sequence of warnings involved. But I do know that locations that flooded catastrophically had at least 1-2+ hours of direct warning from NWS.

One thing I do know is that this part of TX Hill Country is (in)famous for sudden and violent flood risk; that's an intrinsic product of being a hilly region with "flashy" watersheds subject to occasional but very extreme precipitation events arising from bathtub-warm Gulf.

I'm not really clear on why a region so well known for its severe flash flood susceptibly apparently did not have a better warning system in place. That's something I'm sure others with better local knowledge can dissect in greater detail.

But this does illustrate a few tragic and uncomfortable truths. The first is that even quite good weather forecasts do not automatically translate into life-saving predictions--there's a lot of other work that has to take place to contextualize the forecast and ensure it gets to right people.

The second is that the NWS historically has done a very good job at that forecast contextualization (outreach to local governments, emergency managers, outdoor recreation facilities, etc.). But that's one of the first things to go away when offices are critically understaffed.

The third is that this kind of record-shattering rain (caused by slow-moving torrential thunderstorms) event is *precisely* that which is increasing the fastest in warming climate. So it's not a question of whether climate change played a role--it's only a question of how much.

The fourth is that *exact* location and intensity localized to regional-scale convective storms (i.e., clusters of intense thunderstorms) are something that, in almost all cases, cannot be pinpointed days in advance with extant predictive tools--even in theory.

That means that while predictions can correctly highlight specific regions at high risk of extreme rainfall/flash floods from such events (as was the case here), it's not possible to predict the exact amount of rain at specific points from t-storm downpours so far in advance.