Texas Braces for More Floods, Rain Forecast as Death Toll Rises to 82
What to Know:
At least 82 people have died across central Texas, including 28 children.
Kerr County is the epicenter of the disaster, with 40 adults and 28 children confirmed dead.
Rescuers are still searching for 41 missing people, including 10 girls and a counselor from Camp Mystic.
The Guadalupe River rose more than 20 feet in under two hours during the peak of the flooding.
Gov. Greg Abbott has warned that more heavy rain is expected, which will increase the risk of additional flash floods.
Local officials say waterways are already swelling again, and evacuation orders may expand.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is monitoring dam safety as rainfall continues.
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CNN
44 minutes ago
- CNN
Death toll in Texas flooding surpasses 100 as search and rescue enters 5th day
Update: Date: 6 min ago Title: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott will hold a news conference today Content: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott will hold a news conference at 6 p.m. ET in Kerrville on the state's response to the flood devastation, according to a news release from the governor's office. Abbott will also receive a briefing on the state's response. Prior to the briefing and news conference, he and Dustin Burrows, speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, will take an aerial tour to survey the damages caused by the floods and visit Camp Mystic. Abbott said Monday that more than 20 state agencies are responding to flooding across Texas. Additionally, 1,750 personnel and more than 975 vehicles and other assets have been deployed, the governor said in a statement. Tactical and law enforcement personnel from the Department of Public Safety are also assisting, the governor said. Update: Date: 7 min ago Title: Drier weather expected in central Texas today through the end of the week Content: The forecast in central Texas looks like it will be much drier today than the past several days. A handful of showers and thunderstorms could dot the region this afternoon, but these storms aren't likely to present much of a flood threat. A similar setup is possible Wednesday. Thursday and Friday should be dry and mostly sunny in the region. Despite the region forecast to finally dry out, some rivers may rise even after the rain fully stops. The Llano River has risen several feet since yesterday morning and was nearly at minor flood stage by the mid-afternoon. The San Saba River is forecast to hit minor flood stage this afternoon. Much of the Guadalupe River has returned back closer to normal levels and is not currently forecast to flood again in the coming days. Update: Date: 7 min ago Title: Questions remain as Texas communities and families reel from catastrophic flooding Content: As officials in central Texas search for the people still missing after devastating flooding last week and over the weekend, the emergency response to the extreme weather has left many unanswered questions. More than 100 people were killed in the rapidly-rising water. Here are some of the questions:
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
Texas flood toll passes 100 as more bodies recovered
The death toll from catastrophic flooding in Texas rose to more than 100 on Monday, as rescuers continued their grim search for people swept away by torrents of water. Among the dead were at least 27 girls and counselors who were staying at a youth summer camp on a river when disaster struck over the Fourth of July holiday weekend. Forecasters have warned of more flooding as rain falls on saturated ground, complicating recovery efforts involving helicopters, boats, dogs and some 1,750 personnel. "There is still a threat of heavy rain with the potential to cause flooding," Texas Governor Greg Abbott said in a statement Monday, with the number of victims expected to rise still. President Donald Trump confirmed he planned to visit Texas on Friday, as the White House slammed critics claiming his cuts to weather agencies had weakened warning systems. "Blaming President Trump for these floods is a depraved lie, and it serves no purpose during this time of national mourning," Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Monday. She said the National Weather Service, which The New York Times reported had several key roles in Texas unfilled before the floods, issued "timely and precise forecasts and warnings." Trump has described the floods that struck in the early hours of Friday as a "100-year catastrophe" that "nobody expected." The president, who previously said disaster relief should be handled at the state level, has signed a major disaster declaration, activating fresh federal funds and freeing up resources. - 'Tragedy' - At least 104 flood-related deaths were reported across central Texas. Kerr County, through which the Guadalupe River runs, was the hardest hit, with at least 84 people killed including 28 children, according to the local sheriff's office. The toll includes 27 who had been staying at Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian camp that was housing about 750 people when the floodwaters struck. Camps are a beloved tradition in the long US summer holidays, with children often staying in woods, parks and other rural areas. Texas Senator Ted Cruz described them as a chance to make "lifetime friends -- and then suddenly it turns to tragedy." But some residents were questioning the absence of more robust flood-warning systems in this region of south and central Texas -- where such deluges are so frequent that it is known colloquially as "Flash Flood Alley." Experts stress the NWS sent out timely forecasts, and climate scientist Daniel Swain pinned the problem on a failure of "warning dissemination." San Antonio mother Nicole Wilson -- who almost sent her daughters to Camp Mystic -- launched a petition on urging Governor Greg Abbott to approve a modern warning network. "Five minutes of that siren going off could have saved every single one of those children," she told AFP. - Two-story building - In a terrifying display of nature's power, the rain-swollen waters of the Guadalupe River reached treetops and the roofs of cabins as girls at the camp slept. Blankets, teddy bears and other belongings were caked in mud. Windows in the cabins were shattered, apparently by the force of the water. Volunteers were helping search through debris from the river, with some motivated by personal connections to the victims. "We're helping the parents of two of the missing children," Louis Deppe, 62, told AFP. "The last message they got was 'We're being washed away,' and the phone went dead." Months' worth of rain fell in a matter of hours on Thursday night into Friday, and rain has continued in bouts since then. The Guadalupe surged around 26 feet (eight meters) -- more than a two-story building -- in just 45 minutes. Flash floods occur when the ground is unable to absorb torrential rainfall. Human-driven climate change has made extreme weather events such as floods, droughts and heat waves more frequent and more intense in recent years. bur-aks/st
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
Marjorie Taylor Greene's Horrific Comments on the Texas Floods Are Just the Beginning
Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. On Friday morning, heavy rains began pounding Central Texas along the Guadalupe River, rapidly swelling the river basin—by nearly 30 feet in less than an hour—and spurring deadly flash floods. Dozens of children were reported missing from the grounds of Camp Mystic, a nearly century-old Christian girls' summer camp, as floodwaters surged east along the river and ravaged the neighboring city of Kerrville, downing roads and power lines while residents attempted to flee. Federal and local authorities began carrying out rescue missions as more rain overran households in the towns of Burnet and Liberty Hill, extending the damage well into Saturday. By that evening, Gov. Greg Abbott had requested emergency federal aid for six different Texas counties, a declaration that President Donald Trump quickly honored. The floodwaters began receding Sunday morning—only to rise once again as less-severe rains poured into the already-devastated region. As of this writing, flood warnings are still in place for various areas north of Kerrville, including Llano County, where the Llano River's water levels are currently rising. As of Monday afternoon, the official death toll from the weekend stands at 104, with a large majority of those fatalities having occurred in Kerr County—where at least 56 adults and 28 children have perished. That makes these floods some of the deadliest in the country's modern history, and there are likely more reported deaths to come, with dozens of Texans still missing and more flooding forecast throughout the week across the waterlogged towns. Central Texas had been suffering from drought conditions this summer, yet the needed rains landed too suddenly, at too rapid a pace. The remote counties hardest hit are located in what's known as 'Flash Flood Alley,' but the sheer speed at which the rains fell and the rivers swelled was horrific and unprecedented. A catastrophe of this scale and pace spurs urgent questions that seek impossibly quick answers. And, as is sadly typical these days, there are many waiting to provide only wrong answers, with the goal of inflaming political passions and redirecting a state's, and country's, mass grief. You could see this in a manufactured story that went viral this weekend and was even picked up by mainstream outlets: the rumored rescue of two missing girls who'd been clinging for life to a tree. This was an entirely made-up account boosted via Facebook, according to CNN's Brian Stelter, and it served only to provide false hope to grieving parents. Even House Rep. Chip Roy, an otherwise-reliable conspiracist, took to social media to swat down this feel-good hoax. The bigger question, however, was that of preparation—how could Texans have shielded themselves from such hard-falling rains and rapidly rising waters? Many liberals were quick to point out that the Trump administration's steep cuts to the government's weather-monitoring and warning systems likely contributed to inaction and incapacity; elected officials in the harmed areas blamed the local National Weather Service outposts for not providing sufficient forecasts. (As is typical of him, Trump referred to those federal services as a 'Biden setup.') But, at least in this case, none of those explanations holds water. Yes, there are staffing shortages at the NWS stations in San Angelo and in San Antonio, and those exist in part because of DOGE's governmentwide cuts. Still, by all accounts, the meteorologists in place at neighborhood NWS offices did the best they could, having issued consistent warnings of increasingly intense 'downpours' in the days leading up to stormfall. By Thursday evening, as Wired's Molly Taft reported, the NWS had even dispatched a flood watch. It is true that the agency did not predict the exact amount and extent to which the rains would fall and overflow the banks of the Guadalupe River—not least because what unfolded was the worst-case scenario. And that unprecedented severity did not become apparent to forecasters until the early-morning hours of Friday, when most residents were asleep. These remote Central Texas towns may not have widespread cellphone reception, making it difficult for residents to receive timely alerts anyway. Those who might have turned to the internet instead would not have seen anything until around 5 a.m., when the Facebook pages for the Kerrville Police Department and the Kerr County government finally reshared the scarier NWS warnings. Such important details are granular in nature, and it doesn't help when some of Texas' neighbors lob their own conspiracy theories. In Georgia, MAGA congressional candidate Kandiss Taylor posted multiple tweets on X referring to 'fake weather' and 'fake flooding,' doubling down against 'raging liberals' and 'brainwashed zombies' when encountering backlash. 'It's cloud seeding, geoengineering, & manipulation,' Taylor tweeted. 'If fake weather causes real tragedy, that's murder. Pray. Prepare. Question the narrative.' Since it apparently wasn't enough for one Georgia Republican to raise such alarming conspiracy theories, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene joined in on the action, continuing her proud tradition of blaming Jewish space lasers and claiming that a certain 'they' can 'control the weather' in response to historic natural disasters. This time, she's pushing legislation piggybacking off Taylor's nods to cloud seeding and geoengineering (the basis of her prior lies about how 'they can control the weather'), tweeting on Saturday that she had introduced a bill that 'prohibits the injection, release, or dispersion of chemicals or substances into the atmosphere for the express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate, or sunlight intensity.' But cloud seeding and geoengineering experiments are severely limited in scope and unable to power anything even resembling this weekend's rains. So now we've ended up in a place where even a longtime climate denier like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is being forced to push back against Greene and Taylor's disinformation, admitting that there's 'zero evidence' such 'weather modification' could have caused this. Yes, climate change is key to this tragedy. Weather analysts have observed that the flood conditions were exacerbated by a deadly, unlikely combination: northward-bound remnants of the tropical cyclone that flooded southeastern Mexico late last month, which traveled above the long-steaming, constantly warming waters of the Gulf of Mexico (whose alarming temperatures provided fuel last year for ghastly Hurricanes Helene and Milton). A jet stream then carried all this moisture to an especially flood-prone region of Texas, with riverbeds and arid soil and hillsides. This was the worst possible manifestation of this climate change–induced setup. Though the NWS isn't thoroughly sabotaged, our federal systems are woefully unprepared for the summer. By the end of this month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will stop transmitting information from military satellites that have been deployed and used historically to measure the paths of extreme-weather disasters like hurricanes. So it's only a matter of time before the Trump administration cuts do fail us. But we won't be ready to take on the future if we don't get straight what's going wrong now. We may find out how bad things are sooner than later: Tropical Storm Chantal is currently flooding North Carolina with inches of rain, and the water is making its way up through the northeast.
