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.

The White House is defending the National Weather Service and accusing some Democrats of playing politics in the wake of devastating floods in Texas.

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.