Key positions at National Weather Service offices across Texas are vacant, sowing doubt over the state’s ability to respond to natural disasters as rescuers comb through the flood-ravaged Hill Country.

NWS says Flash Flood Warnings were issued on July 3 and early July 4 in Central Texas, giving more than three hours of warning.

Regardless, the process cannot create storms out of thin air. Ken Leppert, an associate professor of atmospheric science at the University of Louisiana Monroe, said it “had absolutely nothing” to do with the flash floods in Texas.