3 dead after historic flooding in Ruidoso
RUIDOSO, N.M. (KRQE) – Devastation has hit Ruidoso again. Tuesday night, three people died, dozens had to be rescued, and homes were destroyed after violent flash flooding. Late Tuesday night, the Village of Ruidoso confirmed that a four-year-old girl, seven-year-old boy, and a 40 to 50-year old man were swept downstream and killed. Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham has declared a state of emergency, requesting federal response teams for the area. She added the state has already sent support and some federal resources are already on their way.
'Our hearts are broken for the families who have lost their loved ones in this terrible tragedy,' said Mayor Lynn Crawford in a news release. 'The entire Village of Ruidoso extends our deepest sympathy and compassion to these grieving families during this unimaginably difficult time. We are united in our sorrow and our commitment to supporting one another as we face this devastating loss together.'
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Historic flooding caused the Rio Ruidoso to rise to 20 feet, five feet higher than the previous record. Flooding caused an entire home to be swept away. 'We started the morning with a flash flood watch from the National Weather Service, so we knew there was something probably on the horizon,' said Village of Ruidoso Public Information Officer Kerry Gladden.
Only hours later, that watch became an emergency. 'On the north end of town, we were starting to see some significant flooding,' said Gladden.
Flash flooding tore through parts of Ruidoso Tuesday afternoon, impacting areas around Upper Canyon, Brady Canyon, and the Rio Ruidoso. 'I don't think it was a shock because we were prepared, but you know you certainly don't want to see it happen on this scale,' said Gladden.
Last summer, the South Fork Fire devastated the village, and then burn scar flooding caused even more damage. Yet, many are saying what happened Tuesday is the worst they've seen so far, and village officials agree. 'We had one of our water gauges, which we call the Hollywood gauge, and it's down at the end of Ruidoso in between Ruidoso and Ruidoso Downs, and it saw a historical high of twenty feet,' said Gladden.
Up from 15 feet just last year, Gladden said, swift water rescue crews quickly got to work. 'There was one home that was swept away, I do not know, I don't have any confirmation if there was anyone inside,' said Gladden.
Ruidoso Downs Race Track crews had begun restoring the track earlier this year, putting in culverts and a retention basin to help with flooding.
Video from Tuesday shows flood water taking over the track, overpowering those flood mitigation efforts that worked just two weeks ago.
Gladden said this is the village's new reality for the next few years. She hopes in light of the tragedy in Texas, everyone takes these warnings seriously.
Ruidoso officials said that there were 50-60 rescues made Tuesday. Search and rescue operations were still underway Tuesday night. A few people were taken to the hospital.
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USA Today
25 minutes ago
- USA Today
Texas flood cleanup continues amid gloomy storm forecast
The latest round of flash flooding was receding in central Texas early Monday, but another round of storms forecast for later in the day could bring more hurt to a region slammed by killer flooding. The National Weather Service warned that thunderstorms producing "excessive rainfall and potential flooding" were forecast Monday and Tuesday. A flood watch was in effect for more than a dozen counties. Among them: Kerr County, where more than 100 people were killed when the Guadalupe River roared over their banks on the Fourth of July. Rainfall amounts of 1 to 2 inches with isolated amounts of 3 to 5 inches are possible, the weather service said. Cleanup from the flooding, delayed Sunday when a new round of storms swept through the area, is once again underway, officials in Kerr County said. "Broken but unbowed. We remain proud Americans," Gov. Greg Abbott said in a social media post that showed an American flag waving amid the destruction. "Thanks to people across the country for your outpouring of support." Timeline of tragedy: How the floods unfolded In the early days of July, pieces of weather systems were converging to bring devastation to the Texas Hill Country, transforming the Guadalupe River into a monster raging out of its banks in the pre-dawn hours of July 4. At least 129 people have died, and at least 160 are listed as missing. The hours leading up to the disaster, and the actions taken to protect the lives of those in the water's hellish fury, are critical to understanding what happened and whether more could have been done in the name of safety. Through a National Weather Service messaging service with emergency management officials and broadcast meteorologists, U.S. Geological Survey data and other records, USA TODAY has pieced together a timeline of the calamity on the Guadalupe. See the details here. − Dinah Voyles Pulver 'Don't drown': Timeline of the Guadalupe River flooding disaster
Yahoo
42 minutes ago
- Yahoo
The Texas flash flood is a preview of the chaos to come
ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. On July 4, the broken remnants of a powerful tropical storm spun off the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico so heavy with moisture that it seemed to stagger under its load. Then, colliding with another soggy system sliding north off the Pacific, the storm wobbled and its clouds tipped, waterboarding south central Texas with an extraordinary 20 inches of rain. In the predawn blackness, the Guadalupe River, which drains from the Hill Country, rose by more than 26 vertical feet in just 45 minutes, jumping its banks and hurtling downstream, killing 109 people, including at least 27 children at a summer camp located inside a federally designated floodway. Over the days and weeks to come there will be tireless — and warranted — analysis of who is to blame for this heart-wrenching loss. Should Kerr County, where most of the deaths occurred, have installed warning sirens along that stretch of the waterway, and why were children allowed to sleep in an area prone to high-velocity flash flooding? Why were urgent updates apparently only conveyed by cellphone and online in a rural area with limited connectivity? Did the National Weather Service, enduring steep budget cuts under the current administration, adequately forecast this storm? Those questions are critical. But so is a far larger concern: The rapid onset of disruptive climate change — driven by the burning of oil, gasoline and coal — is making disasters like this one more common, more deadly and far more costly to Americans, even as the federal government is running away from the policies and research that might begin to address it. President Lyndon B. Johnson was briefed in 1965 that a climate crisis was being caused by burning fossil fuels and was warned that it would create the conditions for intensifying storms and extreme events, and this country — including 10 more presidents — has debated how to respond to that warning ever since. Still, it took decades for the slow-motion change to grow large enough to affect people's everyday lives and safety and for the world to reach the stage it is in now: an age of climate-driven chaos, where the past is no longer prologue and the specific challenges of the future might be foreseeable but are less predictable. Climate change doesn't chart a linear path where each day is warmer than the last. Rather, science suggests that we're now in an age of discontinuity, with heat one day and hail the next and with more dramatic extremes. Across the planet, dry places are getting drier while wet places are getting wetter. The jet stream — the band of air that circulates through the Northern Hemisphere — is slowing to a near stall at times, weaving off its tracks, causing unprecedented events like polar vortexes drawing arctic air far south. Meanwhile the heat is sucking moisture from the drought-plagued plains of Kansas only to dump it over Spain, contributing to last year's cataclysmic floods. We saw something similar when Hurricane Harvey dumped as much as 60 inches of rain on parts of Texas in 2017 and when Hurricane Helene devastated North Carolina last year — and countless times in between. We witnessed it again in Texas this past weekend. Warmer oceans evaporate faster, and warmer air holds more water, transporting it in the form of humidity across the atmosphere, until it can't hold it any longer and it falls. Meteorologists estimate that the atmosphere had reached its capacity for moisture before the storm struck. The disaster comes during a week in which extreme heat and extreme weather have battered the planet. Parts of northern Spain and southern France are burning out of control, as are parts of California. In the past 72 hours, storms have torn the roofs off of five-story apartment buildings in Slovakia, while intense rainfall has turned streets into rivers in southern Italy. Same story in Lombok, Indonesia, where cars floated like buoys, and in eastern China, where an inland typhoon-like storm sent furniture blowing down the streets like so many sheafs of paper. Léon, Mexico, was battered by hail so thick on Monday it covered the city in white. And North Carolina is, again, enduring 10 inches of rainfall. There is no longer much debate that climate change is making many of these events demonstrably worse. Scientists conducting a rapid analysis of last week's extreme heat wave that spread across Europe have concluded that human-caused warming killed roughly 1,500 more people than might have otherwise perished. Early reports suggest that the flooding in Texas, too, was substantially influenced by climate change. According to a preliminary analysis by ClimaMeter, a joint project of the European Union and the French National Centre for Scientific Research, the weather in Texas was 7% wetter on July 4 than it was before climate change warmed that part of the state, and natural variability alone cannot explain 'this very exceptional meteorological condition.' That the United States once again is reeling from familiar but alarming headlines and body counts should not be a surprise by now. According to the World Meteorological Organization, the number of extreme weather disasters has jumped fivefold worldwide over the past 50 years, and the number of deaths has nearly tripled. In the United States, which prefers to measure its losses in dollars, the damage from major storms was more than $180 billion last year, nearly 10 times the average annual toll during the 1980s, after accounting for inflation. These storms have now cost Americans nearly $3 trillion. Meanwhile, the number of annual major disasters has grown sevenfold. Fatalities in billion-dollar storms last year alone were nearly equal to the number of such deaths counted by the federal government in the 20 years between 1980 and 2000. The most worrisome fact, though, may be that the warming of the planet has scarcely begun. Just as each step up on the Richter scale represents a massive increase in the force of an earthquake, the damage caused by the next 1 or 2 degrees Celsius of warming stands to be far greater than that caused by the 1.5 degrees we have so far endured. The world's leading scientists, the United Nations panel on climate change and even many global energy experts warn that we face something akin to our last chance before it is too late to curtail a runaway crisis. It's one reason our predictions and modeling capabilities are becoming an essential, lifesaving mechanism of national defense. What is extraordinary is that at such a volatile moment, President Donald Trump's administration would choose not just to minimize the climate danger — and thus the suffering of the people affected by it — but to revoke funding for the very data collection and research that would help the country better understand and prepare for this moment. Over the past couple of months, the administration has defunded much of the operations of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the nation's chief climate and scientific agency responsible for weather forecasting, as well as the cutting-edge earth systems research at places like Princeton University, which is essential to modeling an aberrant future. It has canceled the nation's seminal scientific assessment of climate change and risk. The administration has defunded the Federal Emergency Management Agency's core program paying for infrastructure projects meant to prevent major disasters from causing harm, and it has threatened to eliminate FEMA itself, the main federal agency charged with helping Americans after a climate emergency like the Texas floods. It has — as of last week — signed legislation that unravels the federal programs meant to slow warming by helping the country's industries transition to cleaner energy. And it has even stopped the reporting of the cost of disasters, stating that doing so is 'in alignment with evolving priorities' of the administration. It is as if the administration hopes that making the price tag for the Kerr County flooding invisible would make the events unfolding there seem less devastating. Given the abandonment of policy that might forestall more severe events like the Texas floods by reducing the emissions that cause them, Americans are left to the daunting task of adapting. In Texas, it is critical to ask whether the protocols in place at the time of the storm were good enough. This week is not the first time that children have died in a flash flood along the Guadalupe River, and reports suggest county officials struggled to raise money and then declined to install a warning system in 2018 in order to save approximately $1 million. But the country faces a larger and more daunting challenge, because this disaster — like the firestorms in Los Angeles and the hurricanes repeatedly pummeling Florida and the southeast — once again raises the question of where people can continue to safely live. It might be that in an era of what researchers are calling 'mega rain' events, a flood plain should now be off-limits.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
'Don't drown': Timeline of the Guadalupe River flooding disaster
In the early days of July, pieces of weather systems were converging to create a disaster over Texas Hill Country that would transform the Guadalupe River into a monster raging out of its banks in the pre-dawn hours of July 4, claiming the lives of more than 129 people. At least 160 are still missing. The hours leading up to the tragedy, and the actions taken to protect the lives of those in the water's hellish fury, are critical to understanding what happened and whether more could have been done in the name of safety. Through a National Weather Service messaging service with emergency management officials and broadcast meteorologists, U.S. Geological Survey data and other records, USA TODAY has pieced together a timeline of the calamity on the Guadalupe. As early as July 1, the National Weather Service began warning of the potential for heavy rains. Bits of Tropical Storm Barry, which dissipated over eastern Mexico on June 30 but were still loaded with rain after their journey over the warm Bay of Campeche, were moving into Texas. Tropical moisture from the eastern Pacific, which has been cranking out storms this summer, also was moving into the region. By July 2, the weather service began warning that Hill Country could continue to see showers and isolated storms "well into Friday morning." In the end, a terrible deluge, greater than anyone expected, fell over the steep hills and rugged terrain, delivering up to 20 inches of rain over three days in some parts of the region. In the headwaters of the Guadalupe River, where its North and South forks converge west of Hunt, Texas, the rain flowed down hills and rushed into the river, surprising homeowners, campers and vacationers. "It's hard to believe the devastation," President Donald Trump said Friday as he visited the flooded region. "We are grieving with you," said First Lady Melania. "Our nation is grieving with you." The geological survey maintains gauges in the river that track the surface height of the water. Even though the reported measurements are still considered preliminary, they provide the clearest picture of the river's explosive rise. Here are the hours leading up to the disaster: Slow-moving convective storms may rain over and over in the same location and cause flash flooding in the Hill Country region of Texas, advises the National Weather Service's Weather Prediction Center. Weather service meteorologists join a Zoom call with more than a dozen state and local emergency management officials to discuss the rain and forecast. It isn't known whether Kerr County officials were on the call. What Texas cities flooded? Here's where the most rain fell over the Independence Day weekend Storms are increasingly blanketing south-central Texas, says the weather service office in Austin/San Antonio, adding it's "closely monitoring for the potential of locally heavy rain today and tonight." The weather service says it will issue a flood watch for parts of South Central Texas, including Hill Country and the Rio Grande, because of the "abundant tropical moisture in place and the potential for heavy rain this afternoon into the evening and into the overnight hours." A Flood Watch through 7 a.m. is posted on the weather service office Facebook page, for western Hill Country, the Rio Grande and the southern portion of the Edwards Plateau. The plateau is an elevated region formed from marine deposits such as limestone and sandstone when the area was covered by an ocean some 100 million years ago. Moments earlier, the Texas Division of Emergency Management posted a news release on Facebook, announcing it had activated its emergency operations center and adding resources ahead of expected heavy rainfall and flash flooding threats over the holiday weekend. In a weather discussion, the prediction center says it's seeing "concerning trends for back-building and training thunderstorms" over the Texas Hill Country that could produce more than 3 inches of rain an hour, thanks to a bit of Barry's leftover circulation. High levels of moisture, a "quite unstable" atmosphere, and a jet of winds could all contribute to heavier rain. Given the prolific rainfall potential, the weather service says "locally considerable flash flooding this evening is possible." In response to a request from Bexar County, the weather service says some models bring moderate to heavy rain across the northwest part of the Bexar, while others keep the activity over the southern Edwards Plateau. Moments later, the weather service says it expects shower and thunderstorm activity to increase over the next 3 to 4 hours , with some models suggesting the heaviest rain potential across the southern portion of the plateau. In Kerrville, one of the gauges in the Guadalupe River first begins to detect a slight rise in the water level. In an "URGENT - IMMEDIATE BROADCAST REQUESTED," the weather service expands the flood watch to Bexar, Kendall, Gillespie and Llano counties through 7 a.m. on July 4, and says isolated amounts of 5 to 7 inches of rain are possible. "Pockets of heavy rain are affecting Kendall County and then heading to parts of Gillespie and Blanco Counties," the weather service states, which could add to the 1 to 2 inches that have fallen over some areas in 3 hours. A flood advisory posts for Bandera County, Kerr County's neighbor to the south, after 1 to 2 inches of rain, with additional rainfall moving in. Weather service upgrades to a flash flood warning for Bandera County because it's seeing rain potential of 5 to 7 inches near Tarpley. Soon after, a rain gauge near Tarpley shows 2.68 inches of rain in 45 minutes. Areas of flash flooding will be likely across Central Texas overnight with "very heavy rainfall" expected, with hourly rainfall in excess of 2 to 3 inches and six-hour totals over 6 inches, the Weather Prediction Center announces. It warns of "training" (rain in the same place again and again) over Bandera and San Saba counties, and southeast of San Angelo. "These areas of heavy rainfall are expected to result in a few areas of flash flooding through the overnight, some of which may become locally significant." Storms are beginning to merge over central Kerr County and will be an area to watch for potential flash flooding, the weather service says. The Guadalupe River at a gauge above Bear Creek near Kerrville begins to rise. The weather service issues "a Flash Flood Warning" for northwest Bandera County into central Kerr County. The USGS gauge on the Guadalupe River at Hunt, Texas shows the river's flow increasing and water height creeping upward. The water rises about a tenth of a foot in 25 minutes. The USGS gauge on Guadalupe at Kerrville has risen 6 inches in 2.5 hours, reaching a height of .84 feet at the gauge. Rain rates have increased across south-central Kerr County, with an estimated 2 to 4 inches of rain so far, the weather service says. "Flooding is likely to begin in the warned area if it hasn't already." " It advises officials and broadcast meteorologists to push the reminder "Turn Around, Don't Drown," especially in the hills at night, when it is harder to recognize the depth of the water over a road. The Guadalupe gauge at Hunt shows a rise of .84 feet in an hour. Its flow in cubic feet per second is 30 times faster. The radar estimates 2 to 5 inches of rain has fallen in south-central Kerr County, the weather service says. "Flash flooding has likely begun." At the River Inn Resort in Hunt, Texas, the manager wakes up Randy and Mollie Schaffer, banging on their door and telling them to evacuate immediately because the river is "about to overflow its banks," Randy Schaffer wrote later in a Facebook post. (The Schaffers evacuated but their SUV was swept into the current. He escaped the raging waters, but lost his beloved Mollie.) At the gauge near Hunt, the Guadalupe has risen 6.29 feet in two hours. Water flow is 1,000 times faster. A downstream flood warning will be issued for the Guadalupe River at Kerrville, and a flash flood warning for south-central Kerr and northwest Bandera extended until 7 a.m., the weather service says. It's issued at 3:33 a.m. "Again, this is a very dangerous flash flood event unfolding." The latest river forecast takes Guadalupe at Hunt to "major flood stage," the weather service says. Eight minutes later, at 4:04 a.m., the service upgrades the Flash Flood Warning to a Flash Flood Emergency. Meanwhile the Guadalupe above Bear Creek also begins to transform, rising six inches in three hours. Screams wake Kolton Taylor at Camp La Junta on the Guadalupe. He climbs from his bed into knee-high floodwaters that soon become waist-high. He later tells his mother, Janet Davis, he hears sounds "he won't ever forget." Weather service radar estimates a swath of 5 to 10 inches of rain has fallen in 3 to 6 hours across south-central Kerr County, with 7.85 inches measured just upstream of the community of Hunt. "This is a PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS SITUATION and a Flash Flood EMERGENCY is in effect through 7 AM," the weather service warns. The Guadalupe River's flow at the USGS gauge near Hunt has grown from 9 cubic feet per second at 1:20 a.m. to 72,100 cubic feet per second, pushing the river 17 feet higher. The heaviest rainfall begins to shift north in Kerr County and the weather service says it will issue a flood advisory for southwest Gillespie County. The Guadalupe rises sharply and reaches its 2nd highest height on record near Hunt, higher than a terrible deadly flood in July 1987, the weather service says. "This flood wave will continue downstream through Kerrville and Comfort. This is a very dangerous and life-threatening flood event along the Guadalupe River!" Minutes later, the West Gulf River Forecast Center upgrades its forecast for the river to crest at 34 feet at Hunt, near its record height at that gauge, set in 1932 at 36.6 feet. The measuring gauge at Hunt sends its last reading before being submerged, showing the water level rose from a height of 7.69 to 37.52 feet in less than 4 hours. Downstream on the Guadalupe, the gauge at Kerrville has risen a foot. It will rise 3.5 feet in the next 14 minutes and more than 7 feet in 30 minutes. The USGS gauge on the Guadalupe at Bear Creek shows a rise of 9 feet in an hour. The Kerrville Police Department posts on Facebook ***FLOOD ALERT***. It states the weather service reports record high water in Hunt and that anyone near the Guadalupe River "needs to move to higher ground now." After talking with emergency management officials, the weather service says it will issue a Flash Flood Emergency for the Guadalupe River from Hunt through Kerrville and down to Center Point. "This will allow for wireless emergency alerts of cell phones for residents and campers along the river. This is a very dangerous and potentially deadly flood wave moving down the river." High water rescues are ongoing along the Guadalupe River and South Fork of the Guadalupe River in Hunt, with people on roof tops, local emergency officials tell the weather service. The USGS gauge on the Guadalupe at Kerrville shows the river has risen 24.2 feet in one hour. The Kerr County Sheriff's Office posts on Facebook: 'DANGEROUS FLOODING NOW on the Guadalupe River in Hunt.' Widespread rain, some heavy, continues falling across Hill Country, with a flash flood emergency ongoing for south-central Kerry County. "Continue to push for people to move to higher ground if they are along the Guadalupe River in Kerr County! Otherwise avoid travel through the county," the weather service says. The sun rises in Kerrville, Texas, allowing flood victims still clinging to trees and debris to begin seeing the full devastating destruction around them. A rain gauge on the USGS equipment at Hunt, reports 7.54 inches of rain, the weather service reports. The USGS gauge on the Guadalupe at Hunt reaches its highest point – 34.29 feet, an increase of 32.47 feet in an hour and forty-five minutes. The weather service issues another flash flood emergency along the Guadalupe, downstream from Center Point to below Comfort. Embedded content: A flash flood warning is issued for western Gillespie County, where 2-4 inches rain has fallen and another 1 to 3 inches is possible. An additional 2 to 4 inches of rain could fall in Kerr County, the weather service says, which could produce another small rise in river levels. A meteorologist with CBS tells the weather service a viewer with family in law enforcement reported an entire RV park was swept downstream in Ingram with families inside the trailers. A video from behind Howdy's Bar and Chill confirmed the river was climbing to the back of the restaurant, says the weather service. "This is a catastrophic flooding event in Kerr County," the Sheriff's Office posts on Facebook. "We can confirm fatalities ... and the entire county is an extremely active scene." Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick confirms during its news briefing that "somewhere between 6 and 10 bodies have been found," emphasizing that number would change. At Camp Mystic, a waterfront girls camp south of the Hunt community, 23 girls are unaccounted for, Patrick says. "That does not mean they've been lost. They could be in a tree. They could be out of communication. We're praying for all of those missing to be found alive." Contributing: Christopher Cann, Rick Jervis and Marc Ramirez, USA TODAY Dinah Voyles Pulver, a national correspondent for USA TODAY, writes about climate change, violent weather and other news. Reach her at dpulver@ or @dinahvp on Bluesky or X or dinahvp.77 on Signal. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Don't drown': The timeline of deadly flooding in Texas Hill Country
