Timelapse video shows Texas flash floods turn dry riverbed into deadly rapids in 20 minutes
CCTV footage shows water begin surging into the Llano River at 17:14. Within minutes, a road crossing the river is entirely submerged, with the waterline rising significantly on both sides of the riverbank and completely covering trees and bushes.
The river is located roughly 70 miles northeast of Kerr County, where at least 43 people, including 15 children, have died in the flooding, alongside eight other people from neighbouring counties.
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The Guardian
12 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Weather tracker: supercharged storms hit Texas's ‘Flash Flood Alley'
Texas was hit by catastrophic flash floods on Friday after powerful thunderstorms unleashed torrential rainfall across the region. Kerr County, in the south-central Hill Country, received more than 300mm of rain in just a few hours. As of Sunday evening, at least 68 people had been confirmed dead, and 28 girls were missing after flood waters tore through a summer camp. In just two hours, the Guadalupe River surged by more than 6 metres (20ft), sweeping away vehicles and inundating homes. The storms were supercharged by moisture from the remnants of tropical storm Barry, which had struck Mexico earlier in the weekand drawn saturated air from the Gulf, and instability in the atmosphere facilitated by a low-level jet stream. Climate change is expected to increase the likelihood of these events, as warmer air can hold more moisture. The Hill Country's rugged topography, marked by steep hills, canyons, and valleys, amplifies the risk and impact of flash flooding, and it is often referred to as 'Flash Flood Alley'. On top of that, the area's limestone and granite terrain exacerbates runoff, because water struggles to soak into the ground. Meanwhile, what began as a tropical depression near the north-west of the Philippines rapidly intensified into Typhoon Danas over the weekend and struck Taiwan on Sunday morning with winds reaching 85mph and torrential rain. Almost 3,000 people had to evacuate their homes. Originally expected to head towards Thailand, the storm altered its course over the weekend, veering northwards across the Taiwan Strait. On Sunday, more than 150mm of rainfall was recorded in parts of Taiwan, causing landslides and flash flooding. Further heavy rainfall hit the region on Monday morning. Typhoon Danas is projected to continue its path north-east across the South China Sea, hitting south-east China by midweek. Yellow weather warnings have been issued in Fujian and southern Zhejiang provinces, where wind speeds may reach up to 90mph and more than 130mm of rainfall is expected by Wednesday. However, the exact trajectory of the storm remains uncertain and may shift in the coming days. Although Thailand was spared a direct hit, the typhoon has amplified the region's monsoon, intensifying the south-westerly winds and drawing in more saturated air from the surrounding ocean. Consequently, northern Thailand has seen an increased humidity and widespread heavy rainfall, which is expected to reach over 90mm in 24 hours in places, bringing the risk of flash flooding and landslides to 33 provinces, particularly near the Mekong River.
The Guardian
32 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘A river with a temper' returns to calm after wreaking deadly devastation in Texas
The Guadalupe River had returned to calm by Saturday evening and was beginning to give up its grim secrets, as 70 people – many of them children – were recovered from what just a day earlier was a terrifying flash flood that had turned land into water, taken homes and retreated to leave miles of terrible devastation along its banks. At Camp Mystic, on a bend in the river flanked by cliffs that sped the torrent as if through a chicane, 700 young girls had five days earlier joined for a month-long summer camp of fun and spiritual growth, the evening brought a strange calm to Texas Hill country. There were the flashlights of emergency vehicles; search helicopters clattered overhead; and wrecked cars marked as searched and clear with paint. A drenched mattress could be seen in the high branches of trees. Homes were obliterated, now stuffed with debris, as rescue workers continued to pull the camp girls and adults from the muddy waters. Crystal Lampard was at her home up a road 150ft from the river early Friday when the first flood alerts started coming through on her phone. 'My husband and I woke up about 2.45 to a loud boom that was probably one of the transformers,' she said. It was raining, but there was nothing to suggest an apocalyptic scene developing below. 'This type of thing – you don't get a warning,' she said. 'We knew the rain was coming but not what we got. 'That water comes down those hills [and] this is where it goes. So if it's pouring 11 inches up at the headwaters, it's got to come here,' she said. 'But there was no indication that's what it would be.' Yet surveying the cypress trees combed flat by flood waters along the Guadalupe's banks, bent canoes and other detritus, Lampard, 51, said the houses that used to be on there – and the people in them – were gone. 'It doesn't matter if you knew them or not – those poor babies,' Lampard said of the children killed by the flood. 'My heart breaks. This river is beautiful but she does get ugly. 'She's a beautiful river with a temper. It's going to be a while before everything is cleaned up, and a while before everybody is found – if they're found.' Her friend, Alisha Sore, 26, said her family had planned to go to the river on Friday for an Independence Day cookout with hotdogs and fireworks. Sore, too, said she gets weather alerts and received a flood alert early Friday morning – but 'there was nothing letting us know it was 20ft tall and we're under water.' On Thursday, a former classmate, Julian Ryan, gave Sore's dad a hug at the bar. He had just become a father for a second time. But hours later, as waters rose furiously, Ryan punched his hand through a window to help his family escape their home, severed an artery, and bled to death. Now, the flood waters were heading to areas downriver. 'They're getting our flood on top of where they're sitting,' Sore said. An initial flood watch for the area was issued at 1.18pm on Thursday predicting rain amounts of between 5 and 7in (12.7 to 17.8 cm). The weather messaging included automated alerts delivered to mobile phones to people in threatened areas. Those warnings grew increasingly ominous in Friday's early hours, urging people to move to higher ground and evacuate flood-prone areas. And as questions are asked about whether meterologists missed the signs of the storm's force, and if alert systems were enough, many in the area grappled with flashbacks to another deadly flood nearly four decades earlier. Some recalled one such emergency a few miles downriver in Comfort in July 1987, when a caravan of buses attempted to escape from a church camp through a low water crossing after an overnight storm. When the buses stalled, the teenagers attempted to form a human chain – and a wall of water washed them away. Ten were killed. 'You can't do anything in 45 minutes,' Lampard said, referring to the window of time she estimated having to flee after it became evident the flood threat was much more serious than initially estimated. 'If we'd try to leave out of here, we would have drove right into it.' Amanda Chaney, who was on the road checking on neighbors, said several of her house-cleaning clients had lost their homes. 'I had my phone on, and I kept getting alerts,' she said. 'But the rain didn't seem much heavier than usual.' Chaney said she noted how emergency responders had 'spread out in different locations instead of planting them all in one'. She interpreted that as a sign of the uncertainty surrounding where the storm which triggered the flood would cause the most damage. At an emergency rescue staging post outside Hunt, a few miles below Camp Mystic and one of the hardest hit hamlets, workers said they had recovered over 15 bodies. By Saturday afternoon, emergency crews from all over the state had converged on the valley. 'Honestly, there could have maybe been more warnings,' said Justin Barnatt, who had driven with his crew 250 miles in three hours from Odessa in west Texas. 'But the river rose 29ft in maybe 45 minutes, and it was three or four o'clock in the morning.' Gunner Alexander, 14, who was resting in the back of an off-road vehicle, said: 'We're not used to seeing our town like this. It's sad – people you know whose house is gone.' He said he knew two girls at Camp Mystic. One had for sure gotten on an evacuation bus, he said. Alexander said the storm's strength was unexpected. 'The rain gauges on our apps showed 3 to 4in,' he remarked. 'It came all of a sudden. It was really unexpected.' Despite the scale of the deadly devastation, he said everyone he knew was trying to find a way to help out fellow community members. Up at Camp Mystic, as night began to fall, tender scenes began to reveal themselves. A man who gave his name as Bobby appeared from the river, drenched and out of breath. Officials had pleaded with the public to leave the search-and-rescue work left to be done to professionals. Yet Bobby drove up two hours from San Antonio to assist. 'I don't work for anyone except for Bobby,' he said. 'I do this completely voluntarily. It's the right thing to do. There's never enough rescue workers. The more rapid the response, the more chance there is of survivors.' A mile downstream, 55-year-old Dan Murray said he had flown down from San Francisco to search for his best friend, his best friend's wife and their son – whose holiday home had been swept clean off its foundations. Neither the home nor its occupants have been found. But their daughter, who they had been coming to collect from Camp Mystic, had survived. 'They haven't found them yet so I have hope – but coming and seeing this utter devastation is rocking my belief that everything is going to be OK,' he said. 'It's just devastating.'
The Guardian
42 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Texas floods reveal limitations of disaster forecasting under climate crisis
The ongoing challenges of forecasting extreme weather during the era of the climate crisis have been brought to the fore again amid catastrophic flash flooding in the 'hill country' region of Texas. As of early Sunday, hundreds of rescuers are searching for at least 12 people still missing as rains taper off outside of San Antonio and Austin. Hundreds of people have already been pulled from floodwaters that have killed nearly 70 people so far, many of them children at a summer camp along the banks of the Guadalupe River. July is peak flash flood season in the US, and central Texas is known as 'flash flood alley' because the necessary ingredients of tropical moisture and slow-moving storms come together often over hilly terrain there. National Weather Service (NWS) forecasters caution that more floods could come this weekend and into next week. The scale of this latest climate disaster became apparent on Saturday as drone footage taken on Saturday morning showed entire neighborhoods inundated and rushing waters streaming through small town streets. Tales of survival and heartbreak were plentiful. An initial analysis of the downpours and the decisions by forecasters that led up to them by the Guardian shows that rainfall of this magnitude was exceedingly rare and difficult to predict, even for this flood-prone region. Friday's totals of more than 10in (25cm) of rain in three hours could be expected just once in a 'typical' 500-year period for Kerrville, Texas – three months' worth of rain in just a few hours. Radar data show that more than 4in per hour fell during the peak of Friday's rains. That rainfall intensity was in excess of a similar flash flood in 1987 that also ended in tragedy for campers along the Guadalupe. Saturday's rainfall totals actually exceeded Friday's rainfall for a region slightly north of Friday's peak rains. Nearly 14in of rain fell in five hours just west of Austin, Texas – rains that would be expected just once in nearly 1,000 years given a stable climate. Despite funding cuts and widespread staffing shortages implemented by the Trump administration, NWS forecasters in both the local San Angelo and Austin/San Antonio offices, and at the NWS national specialty center responsible for excessive rainfall provided a series of watches and warnings in the days and hours leading up to Friday's flooding disaster. An NWS source confirmed to the Guardian that the forecast office in San Angelo, where the heaviest rains fell, has two current vacancies – the meteorologist-in-charge, who leads each NWS office, and the staff hydrologist, who helps make decisions about flood threats. Additionally, the NWS office in Austin/San Antonio — which has primary responsibility for Kerr County — is missing a warning coordination officer, a leadership position whose primary function is to be a decision-making point of contact for local officials and the general public, especially during dangerous weather. Although these positions are vacant, both offices had additional staff working the night shifts on 4 July that performed similar duties. The total staff vacancies at these offices are typical for the pre-Trump era and fewer than the current average staff shortage across the NWS. The local offices have also not been experiencing any lapses in weather balloon data collection that have plagued some other offices. In fact, weather balloon data gathered on Thursday from nearby Del Rio showed record amounts of moisture present in the upper atmosphere above central Texas and added to the confidence that severe flash flooding was possible. The Austin/San Antonio office then began issuing a series of flood watches starting on Thursday afternoon that cautioned the region to prepare for 'excessive runoff' from '5 to 7 inches of rain'. The NWS's Weather Prediction Center, based in College Park, Maryland, also issued a series of mesoscale precipitation discussions on Thursday – highly detailed advance notices to other weather forecasters that a particularly rare event might be underway. In one of the discussions, forecasters noted that moisture content in central Texas was 'above the 99th climatological percentile' – far in excess of normal and a clue that historic flooding was possible. In a final escalation, the NWS office in Austin/San Antonio issued a flash flood emergency about an hour before the water started rapidly rising beyond flood stage at the closest US Geological Survey river monitoring gauge. A flash flood emergency is the highest level of flood warning available to the NWS, and sufficient to set off the Wireless Emergency Alert system, which would have triggered cellphone alarms in the region. The National Weather Service issued dozens of additional flash flood warnings throughout the day on Friday and Saturday after the second wave of extremely heavy rains compounded the flooding's scope across central Texas during the early morning hours. Even though watches and warnings were issued on time throughout the disaster – contrasting what local officials have said in press conferences – rainfall totals specified in the first flash flood watch were about half of what ultimately fell. Current weather forecasting technology is capable of knowing that near-record rainfall may occur somewhere in a given region about a day in advance, but knowing exactly how much and in which part of a specific river's drainage basin over hilly terrain makes flood forecasting much more difficult – analogous to prediction exactly which neighborhood a tornado might strike a day ahead of time. Donald Trump's staffing cuts have particularly hit the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Environmental Modeling Center, which aims to improve the skill of these types of difficult forecasts. Though it's unclear to what extent staffing shortages across the NWS complicated the advance notice that local officials had of an impending flooding disaster, it's clear that this was a complex, compound tragedy of a type that climate warming is making more frequent. Rainfall intensity in central Texas has been trending upward for decades, and this week's rains were enhanced by the remnants of Tropical Storm Barry, which made landfall in northern Mexico last week. Barry's circulation pulled record amounts of atmospheric moisture up to central Texas from the near-record warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The mix of Barry's circulation and climate warming helped create conditions of record-high atmospheric moisture content over central Texas – in line with the trend towards increasing atmospheric moisture content globally as the world warms and the air can hold more water vapor.
