AUSTIN, Texas — Local, state and federal officials are all pointing fingers in the wake of the deadly Texas flooding, but one thing is certain: The warnings weren't heard by the people who needed them.

After the catastrophic Independence Day floods that killed at least 90 across central Texas, state and county officials told reporters that the storm had come without warning. But a wide array of meteorologists — and the Trump administration itself — has argued that those officials, as well as local residents, received a long train of advisories that a dangerous flood was gathering.

The timeline of the floods on Friday, experts say, revealed a deadly gap in the “last mile” system that turns those forecasts into life-saving action.

That issue is particularly pronounced in central Texas, where cellphones go off with National Weather Service (NWS) flash flood advisories practically every time there is a thunderstorm — and where limestone canyons split by countless creeks and punctuated by riverside campgrounds and vacation homes are particularly vulnerable to sudden floods.

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) timeline released over the weekend showed a drumbeat of steadily increasing warnings — something that is characteristic of flash floods, said John Sokich, former legislative director of the NWS staffers union.

Whether a specific neighborhood or camp floods can come down to “which creek basin the rainfall is going to fall, and 3 miles makes a complete difference,” Sokich said.

So NWS forecasters, he said, put out regionwide warnings of potential flash floods, which they tighten as the danger develops. “And then when it gets really bad, they put out the ‘catastrophic flood levels,’ messages, which is what they did for the situation in Texas.”

“The challenge there,” he added, “was people receiving the information."

Meteorologists' warnings of potential flooding, which drew on NWS forecasts, began as early as Wednesday, when CBS Austin meteorologist Avery Tomasco warned that the dregs of Tropical Storm Barry had parked “all this tropical fuel” over central Texas.

“I hesitate to show you this because it's so outlandish,” Tomasco said, but the storm could produce “5 to 15 inches of rain somewhere in central Texas. Again, I think that's pretty far-fetched, but you can't rule out something crazy happening when you have this kind of tropical air in place.”

By sunset the night before the floods, federal forecasters were warning that rainfall would

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