Dan Reilly, former warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service's Houston office. Reilly retired last year after a 32-year career for the weather service. The Houston office has yet to replace him, owing to budget cuts to the Weather Service imposed by the Trump administration.

Utility power line trucks park along Broadway near the causeway Thursday, July 11, 2024, as crews repair power lines downed as Hurricane Beryl made landfall Monday.

Severe flooding is seen next to the I-10 freeway just after Hurricane Beryl makes landfall on Monday, July 8, 2024 in Houston.

Jorge Castrejon with Insulators Local 22 works to clear a tree that fell during Hurricane Beryl onto a truck and home of Adrian Leura shown Tuesday, July 16, 2024, in Houston.

I lived in Galveston for three years as the Chronicle’s Gulf Coast reporter. I’ll always remember my next door neighbor who was BOI (that’s “Born on the Island” for the uninitiated) telling me not to worry about a storm if it was anything less than a Category 3.

Armchair meteorology works for hurricane-hardened island folk. I’m from New York, where biblical storms are a rarity. I wasn’t about to rely on a single number to decide whether we needed to bolt if a tropical system was barreling our way. I wanted expert analysis.

Dan Reilly quickly became one of my weather vanes. Before retiring last October, Reilly was the warning coordination meteorologist for the Houston/Galveston branch of the National Weather Service. He was a key cog in the machinery of a vital federal agency whose timely weather forecasts protect people and property. Whenever a disturbance in the Gulf warranted a watchful eye he was the one responsible for getting critical information out to media.

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Having an experienced, steady hand in this role is an absolute necessity. Reilly’s job was translating the endless array of data the Weather........

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