As this is being written, another storm is about to strike the Texas Hill Country, an area with a historic predilection for large-scale flash flooding. The worst flooding was reported in Kerr County. Rescue and recovery efforts continued Sunday, July 6, and will continue into the week. As of July 7, Monday afternoon, 89 people were known to have perished, including 27 young girls and staffers from Camp Mystic, a wealthy nondenominational Christian summer camp located next to the Guadalupe River.
On July 4, the Trump Administration approved a disaster declaration by Governor Abbott for Texas.
On July 3, the National Weather Service issued flood watches for Hill Country, forecasting up to seven inches of rain overnight. Due to the storms stalling, up to 12 inches of rain fell in some areas instead.
These rains sent a surge of water, reportedly up to 29 feet high, down the Guadalupe River in less than two hours around 0330 on Friday morning, July 4. The flood flow at peak is now estimated at 147,000 cubic feet of water per second (cfs), 60 times the previous record, and is still at 21,237 cfs this morning. Its normal flow is about 12,000 cfs. For comparison, the flow of Niagara Falls is 98,000 cubic feet of water per second.
Hard hit Kerr County does not have an early warning system. The National Weather Service began to issue warnings for intense flooding hours before the heavy rains began. The local office’s coordinator between media and the NWS had just retired through DOGE’s buy-out retirement.
Normally, after the NWS releases a flood warning, the county systems in the affected region relay those warnings through cell phone or alarms throughout the county. According to some sources, County Council hearing documents indicate that a modern flood warning system had been being discussed since at least 2010, but the county had not developed and installed them.
