The death toll from last week’s Texas flooding has passed 100.
For those who don’t understand how a flood this deadly developed so quickly, Brad Johnson in The Texan‘s Fourth Reading newsletter explains:
On Thursday, National Weather Service estimates projected between three and six inches of rain upstream on the Guadalupe River — a problem, but not a five-alarm fire for an area accustomed to that. But things changed rapidly between then and early Friday morning. By 4 a.m. Friday, the rain was falling at 12 inches per hour, according to officials briefed on the situation. Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice said he was running along the river at 3 a.m. and while the river was high, it wasn’t an emergency.
But the storm, made up of remnants of Tropical Storm Barry that made landfall in southeastern Mexico, dumped far more in volume than expected on the area, and rather than move on past the county… it just sat there.
The Guadalupe River rose 20 feet in two hours.
The following video of the flood from the 480/San Antonio Street bridge in Center Point, just a bit downstream of Kerrville, shows the Guadalupe going from a damp trickle to a raging torrent overtopping the bridge in 30 minutes:
Certainly there’s room for improvement for warnings for extreme weather events like this (maybe automated up river flood gauges that alert authorities and endangered residents), but it’s hard to plan for something this extreme that happens in the middle of the night. Worse still: “Places like Camp Mystic, the 750-camper summer camp for girls, do not allow cell phones to be carried by the children.”
If you live near a river or in any sort of flood plain, you probably should have water leak detectors and a bugout bag ready for such emergencies.
Tags: Brad Johnson, flooding, Guadalupe River, Kerrville, prepper, Texas, The Texan News, video, weather
NOAA weather radios are not high tech. Neither are warning sirens along populated areas along flood-prone rivers. One story I saw said there was a grant application some years ago (2022?) for $1 million to put in sirens in the area but it was not approved. That should be possible now.
The area where this flood occurred has been in near drought conditions for years. The prolonged rainfall deficit reduces soil percolation as the soil compacts, which makes these sudden rainfall events all the worse. The water just skates on the surface of the land, to the creeks and rivers, without losing significant volume to soil permeation along the way.
“The Guadalupe River rose 20 feet in two hours.”
This is the first time I ever saw a house try to climb a bridge. It’s a sobering reminder that Nature is an unforgiving force.
I’ve started hearing and reading rumors that there were cloud-seeding operations going on that may have contributed to the severity of the flooding. Not that the flooding was *intentional*, mind you, just that it might’ve been an unintended consequence. No idea whether it’s true or not.
Has anyone here heard anything about that?
I majored in naval architecture in college. It taught me two things about water:
1. It is heavy.
2. It is incompressible.
36 cubic feet of water weighs one long ton (2240lbs). The Guadeloupe rose 29 feet. A 1×1 foot column of water weighs 1800 pounds (or roughly .8 tons). Multiply that by the width of the river. Assume a 12mph current and that means in just that one foot width, 14 tons of water flows past every second.
It doesn’t compress. If it hits a flat wall of a cabin, the cabin wall collapses. If an SUV is hit by that wall sideways that is 232 tons of water hitting it every second. The SUV is going down the river, until it hits something that stops it. At which point it gets battered by 232 tons of water every second. Until the flood subsides.
Was there reverse 911? All those government employees working and accomplishing what beyond watching videos and collecting overtime? Maybe receive official commendations for gallantry?
About a hundred years ago near my house a dam failed in the middle of the night. Only two people died, 5,000 were saved because the human operators called every phone on their circuit and people ran from door to door issuing warnings, remember this is in the middle of the night and very few people had phones back then. We would not do so well in present times.
That area of Texas is prone to flooding and no one has ever done anything to limit the adverse effects.
I rather doubt cloud seeding had any role in the disaster. It was part of a large storm system that came up through Mexico, and is only one of many big storms that have hit central Texas this summer.
You can see how the weather pattern developed here.
Sadly, there was extremely remote chance to avoid this tragedy.
Having worked as a counselor at a summer camp for several years, the sites selected are remote. No mass alarm systems would reach them. Most likely, cell signal was weak and probably compromised due to damage to towers/lines early on in the storm.
Once the weather system stalled, there was nothing to stop a wall of water from destroying the camp with no notice. If initial reports are accurate, once the adults on site realized a flood was occurring, they began trying to save the campers. Several lost their lives trying to rescue the girls.
In hindsight, the administration of EVERY camp facility should evaluate their sites. Flood plains, severe weather plans, wildfires, wild life, power blackouts, etc…
The lesson from this tragedy should not be political finger pointing. It should be practical evaluation of all risks and mitigation of those risks.
Not just rumors about cloud seeding. The cloud seeders’ CEO explained they were absolutely doing it … but assures everyone that it didn’t contribute.
Hmph.
“Rainmaker’s seeding mission was carried out two days before the floods some 150 miles SOUTHEAST of San Antonio.”
🤷♀️
And Kerrville is NORTHWEST of San Antonio.
The emergency plans need to be revamped with an eye to early warnings. Further, the local officials should identify every campsite by it’s exposure level to flooding and prioritize warnings and evac orders to the riskiest sites.
Camp Mystic has been there 99 years and you would think their voices would be loudest in pushing for this.
Peace to all the victims families and I profoundly hope everyone learns the lessons here. Not just in Texas, but all over the country. We are not the only ones who deal with this.
@jabrwok
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2025-07-07/cloud-seeding-company-accused-causing-texas-floods
Two points.
1. Boy, those people put a lot of trust in the bridge and the Engineers who built/maintain it. Once water starts hitting the deck I would have been gone.
2. In response to Sid, above. I have traveled a lot in Japan, including very rural and mountain areas. At least 10 years ago I started noticing solar powered mini cell towers in very remote valleys to insure cell service. I believe this is primarily for emergency use. (Also, you can always tell the flood risk height in Japan because they put the electrical boxes (emergency generator, etc.) above that on the towers. As you get closer to a river the electrical equipment mounted higher and higher on the towers. I remember noting this when Katrina hit and there was a discussion of how the cell towers in the area all failed.)
They also use loudspeaker trucks to warn of any potential hazards — mostly fire during high wind conditions, or flood. The trucks go to remote places as well as in towns warning people who may not know of the warning otherwise.
I am not saying it is practical for such measures everywhere in USA, but it is negligence to not have such systems in place in a flood zone occupied by hundreds of campers.
Seems like commercial activity involving SLEEPING should be completely blocked within flood plains subject to such rapid flooding. Because those patrons cannot possibly be aware of the risk they are taking.
Sid says:
July 9, 2025 at 11:39 AM
Having worked as a counselor at a summer camp for several years, the sites selected are remote. No mass alarm systems would reach them.
Our Boy Scout summer camp in the mid north of Texas (along the Brazos) had a tornado siren right in the middle of the campgrounds. And it worked.
All-in-all, that is an impressive video.
And I say kudos to Texas for keeping nature so clean – I’ve never seen so few bits of human detritus in flood waters. So there’s that.
People ask, where wasn’t there an air raid-type siren? They asked that in the L.A. fires too. People can be sleeping when disaster hits. A siren would wake them up.
I think the answer is that the officials are scared–they don’t want to be the one to pull the switch bc then people will criticize them, or their boss will get mad. And with this over-emphasis on safetyism, the alternative is to pull the switch every time it rains or every time the temp is over 100.
One thing I noticed when I moved from Tampa to Houston was the frequency of weather alerts, they were annoying. They were all severe thunderstorm warnings, that are almost daily summertime occurrence in the TB region. They also were accompanied by flash flood warnings that are unusual in Tampa. I know the hill country is 3 or more hours away and very different geography, but in the NWS alerts were as frequent as Houston, it could very well be a lot of crying wolf syndrome.
It’s been a very wet and weird summer so far here in DFW. By June, the reservoirs were already reported as full and yet humidity, followed by clouds & rain have kept coming. IN 6 years of life in DFW, I’ve not seen this much cloud cover. Usually, it fades by April and its glorious clear skies and brutal (dry) heat. Yeah, we always get the thunderstorm-damaging winds hail-tornado stuff thru-out the summer but, it’s always dry. The humidity has been almost Michigan like in its heavy-slow air movement and accompanying rain after.
I guess I should’a tried tomatoes this year. The lawn (for once) looks great!. Low, water bills.
In Japan, local politicians use loudspeaker trucks to campaign so they are a unique aspect of Japanese culture. Also, in 2011, the forecasted tsunami heights were wildly off. The tsunami was much worse to the north where the quake was much milder compared to the stronger quake felt in the central areas directly across from the epicenter. Even though the quake occurred in daytime and warnings were blared from loudspeakers, those warnings were for max heights that were greatly exceeded by the reality. So while many people did evacuate to higher ground, they did so to areas that should have been safe but were not even close. So even in a prepared society with timely warnings in daytime, conditions can still quickly lead to deadly surprises. Plus, for all the preparation money spent in Japan, they still screwed up basics for the Fukashima nuclear plant. A lot of the emergency preparation in Japan is still government workers spending tax dollars so efficiency and doing things out of habit instead of what works is a problem.
all counselors should have cell phone recieving emergency alerts…
Also agree with site plan review and high ground evacuation drills.
All the sirens, cell alerts, phone calls, and knocking on doors would be useless if there was no evacuation plan and the infrastructure to actually evacuate. If a flash sflood siren activates at midnight how would a camp evac 750 campers? And do it in 15 minutes?
The problem with NOAA weather alert radios are the incredible number of alerts you get. There is a total lack of granularity in areas warned, and if you happen to live near the boundaries of reporting areas you get the same warning from five or six adjacent areas.
And the warnings? No consideration of significance. Warnings to drink sufficiently are the same priority as 12 inches of rain in an hour. When I grew up and lived in Los Angeles the NOAA weather reported from Monterrey to the Mexican border. Monterrey is a good four hour drive or more from LA.
From what I’ve seen, it all happened too fast. The storm “broke” all of the computer models, meaning there was little or no prediction available until the heavy rains had begun. By the time NWS (staffed up to 5 people instead of the normal 2) issued the alert, power had already been lost at many of the affected areas and flooding was already in progress at the farthest upstream locations. When the campers went to bed, there was little in the way of forecasting for potential disasters.
All camps in a flood plain should certainly have NOAA radios with alarms, especially in the counselors’ cabins. We don’t know yet if that was the case. I haven’t seen a minute-by-minute timeline from the camps–that’s going to be necessary in order to do a proper lessons-learned. It may be that there were things that were prepared for incorrectly, or executed poorly. It may also be that evacuating that many people on such short notice was simply infeasible even if everything had been done correctly. We’ll have to wait for more details in order to see what needs to be done to prevent a repeat.
I’ve lived and worked there. very little soil up on the hills, even in the bottoms. The Edwards Plateau is a 38000 square mile parking lot of limestone. these events occur about 40 years apart. lessons learned evaporate over that length of time. Cell coverage is spotty due to low population density. NOAA radios don’t receive in the canyons out there. Rule of thumb, you are your own safety officer. Know the flood plain, know the way out, set a rule and follow it. Heavy rain for 20 mins? Get out now! I love the beauty but that river is heartless and will snuff you out. It reeks of danger and I don’t trust it. Not ever.
[…] Understanding The Speed Of The Texas Flood […]
It would seem, at least in hindsight, that when flood alerts are active for a river your camp is next to, somebody should STAY AWAKE for the duration? The kids could do it in 1-hour shifts & would probably do so eagerly. An old-fashioned and low-cost safety measure is in order. What is the very reason to give kids experience in the wild natural world, if not to teach them respect for the vagaries of nature & how to remain safe in its presence?
The inaugural episode of the tv show Rescue 911 was named “Church Bus”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsC79X6lg-M
On July 17, 1987, a church camp was evacuated due to oncoming flood waters. One of the buses was hit by a wall of water, swept away, and 40 kids were in trees. The episode uses footage of the event, and interviews with those involved, in saving those kids.
It’s … interesting … how the same sort of thing happens nearly 40y later. I would think putting a campsite low down – instead of on high ground – would not be done (if not illegal).
[…] 1. Kerrville. A weak tropical storm came onshore in western Mexico the first week of the month and ended up over the hill country in central Texas the Fourth of July weekend. These air masses are full of moisture and responsible for much of the rain in the southwest this time of year. This one was no exception, with initial forecasts of several inches of rain in growing to 7 – 10” by the weekend. In reality, some locales near Kerrville got as much as 20”. There were no steering currents, so the system moved very slowly, if at all, and rained out. All that water needs to go somewhere. As the hill country of Texas has some vertical development, the water tends to channelize down river and stream valleys, causing flash flooding. The flash flooding was exacerbated by a couple years of local drought conditions. Water does not tend to soak into dry, compacted soil, running off. The flash flooding was both impressive and deadly, with over 130 lost so far. The Guadalupe River rose 26’ in 45 minutes in one location. Recovery crews are sorting through the debris for remains of at least another 100 missing. The last flash flooding in this part of the state took place 1987, though it was not nearly as deadly, washing away a busload of campers, killing 10 of them. The following video was taken from the 420 / San Antonio Street Bridge at Center Point, just a bit downstream from Kerrville. It is a bit long at 30 minutes, but the rise of water is impressive. Also impressive is that as the water crests the bridge, Texas drivers continue to drive through the rising waters. None of them end up off the bridge in the video, demonstrating more luck or testosterone than brains. The river rises to occupy a previously dry floodplain on either side of main channel. This is what campers at Camp Mystic were dealing with in the dark at 5 AM. Camp Mystic was a bible camp for pre-teens inundated in the early morning. Video courtesy Battleswarm Blog, July 7. […]