The early warnings and alerts from the National Weather Service didn’t indicate a catastrophic flood was on its way.

After deadly floodwaters swept through Central Texas, there are questions about the timeline of weather alerts and possible gaps in the warning system.

In the aftermath of deadly Hill Country flooding, Texas’ junior U.S. Senator is defending the National Weather Service, as questions surface over the agency’s forecast timing, urgency and communication.

When deadly floods swept through Texas, the National Weather Service issued a series of warnings that should have automatically triggered alerts to be sent to cellphones as the Guadalupe River began to rise.

An NWS graph from flood sensor data in Kerr County showed what happened in the hours after that first warning; the river rose from about six feet to more than 29 feet in just three hours.