Cliff Mass: ‘There were a number of opportunities to save people’ near Texas river

More than 100 people were killed in flash floods in Texas over the weekend, with survivors saying they did not receive any emergency warnings, The Associated Press (AP) reported Monday.

Although the National Weather Service (NWS) sent out a series of warnings, locals insisted no one saw the floods coming.

“The National Weather Service did get forecasts that provided very useful warnings, the day before they were talking about flash floods,” University of Washington (UW) Atmospheric Sciences Professor Cliff Mass explained on “The John Curley Show.” “Hours before the major disaster happened, they put out extremely strong warnings of the potential for flash flooding.”

Mass noted the area near the Guadalupe River has flooded many times historically.

When asked if people ignored the flood warnings, Mass responded, “There are other camps that did get out of the way, so some people listened to the forecasts, and they pulled back from the water.

“They should have been following, very closely, the forecast that evening, and when the weather service went all out three hours before, calling it an emergency situation, they should have gotten people out. I mean, there was a number of opportunities to save the people near that river,” he added.

Cliff Mass: Texas floods were not connected to climate change

Mass also emphasized that the floods had no connection to climate change.

“The climate change connection is non-existent. There is no trend in heavier precipitation in this region. There is no upward trend in floods,” he explained. “In fact, the EPA, in their climate page, they showed where flooding is increasing and decreasing, and they showed it actually decreasing in this area.”

Mass said that although people blame climate change for natural disasters, such as the Maui wildfires and Los Angeles fires, there’s more to the story.

“The real story is weather predictions become immensely more accurate, and society is not using it to stop these kinds of disasters. That’s the really interesting story here,” Mass noted.

Listen to the full conversation below.

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