Flash floods like the one that swept through
Texas are the nation’s top storm-related killer

Lots of flash floods and monstrous fires recently. It's almost like someone on earth has a hand in this. Maybe someone who wants to depopulate the planet??

Climate change caused the flood. And defunding the NWS by Doge caused the lack of warning. I got the Alphabet News their headlines for tomorrow.

Has anyone seen the articles and pictures on Facebook of the blue rain in Texas. In one video rain fell on a tarp where people were camping and the water was blue. There were a couple more short videos of different locations. I also saw something about Texas having some kind of weather program, had been going on for a couple of years, to do with manually changing the weather. Forgot what to call it. Waiting for someone to say you can't pay attention to what you saw on Facebook .....

Chris Martz · So, let's discuss the flooding in Texas and look at this situation objectively. 1⃣ The National Weather Service (NWS) office in Austin / San Antonio was staffed with five meteorologists throughout the storms on Thursday and Friday, according to NWS meteorologist Jason Runyen. Most offices usually have two on staff when the weather is benign. 🔗 https://apnews.com/.../texas-floods-hill-country-weather... So, the claim that the ~11% reduction in NWS employee headcount from the Trump administration's reductions in force (RIFs) played a role in their ability to post forecasts and get information out to the public is WRONG. 2⃣ The NWS office issued a flood watch for the area at 1:18 p.m. CDT on Thursday, more than 15 HOURS in advance, urging residents to be weather-aware. At 1:14 a.m. CDT, they issued a flash flood warning for, more than three hours before the Guadalupe River rapidly crested at 29.45 feet in Hunt, which is located near Camp Mystic. 🔗 https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/wx/afos/p.php... 🔗 https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/wx/afos/p.php... There was plenty of warning from forecasters, even if initial forecasts did not predict some 12-20 inches of rain falling. The unfortunate aspect of all of this is that most people were probably asleep when the waters rose, and with no county flood warning systems that function like a tornado siren, the flash flood warnings posted by the NWS went unnoticed. 3⃣ The flooding was inevitable. The remnants of Tropical Storm Barry, which made landfall in Mexico, were absorbed into a broad, retrograding upper-level low. Further destabilization of the lower atmosphere resulted in a rotating mesoscale convective vortex (MCV), which stalled over Central Texas and dropped over 1.8 trillion gallons of rain on the Hill Country. 🌧️ The dynamics involved here are poorly understood, and as a result, mesoscale models have a very difficult time predicting exactly where these sorts of systems will form and exactly how much rain could fall. What's more, the terrain across the Texas Hill Country is characterized by a dry, thin layer of topsoil and exposed rocks on the surface, making it prone to flash flooding events. Heavy rainfall isn't readily absorbed, and trickles down into nearby rivers and creeks, where it causes them to spill over their banks. 🪨 4⃣ The rainfall and flooding were not unprecedented, and it had little to do with climate change. Camp Mystic and neighboring communities like Hunt and Kerrville are located on the floodplains of the Guadalupe River Valley. The sediment that they're built on has been deposited by hundreds of floods over the last several thousand years. Flooding there is expected. And, while we may be seeing heavier rainfall events in the region because the atmosphere is a little warmer now, there have been no detectable increases in either the frequency or magnitude of river floods in the Texas Hill Country since 1965. In fact, they have decreased over the last 60 years, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). 🔗 https://www.epa.gov/.../climate-change-indicators-river... In early September 1921, downtown San Antonio was inundated beneath 2-12 feet of floodwaters caused by the decaying remnants of a category one hurricane that made landfall in Mexico. Over two feet of rain fell in the Guadalupe River Valley and Thrall recorded 38.2 inches of rain in 24 hours, including 23.4 inches in just six hours. On July 2, 1932, Mountain Home recorded 32.4 inches of rain in 18 hours, which was caused by a very similar stalled upper-level low and orographic enhancement. 🔗 https://pubs.usgs.gov/.../cd_files/USGS_Storms/patton.htm The highest 24-hour rainfall I could find from Friday's rainfall was a little over 21 inches, so that was far from record-shattering in the general area. The associated flooding also wasn’t unprecedented along the Guadalupe River. The crests at all stations were far from the record peak set at Spring Branch in August 1869. 𝐊𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞: Peak crest of 23.40 feet. • 3rd highest on record at that gauge • Record: 39.00 ft. on July 2, 1932 𝐂𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐩𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐭: 21.41 ft. • 2nd highest on record • Record: 24.27 ft. on October 16, 1978 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐭: 34.76 ft. • 5th highest on record • Record: 42.3 ft. on July 1, 1869 • Three of the top five highest occurred prior to 1940 𝐁𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐦: 49.70 ft. • Highest in record at that gauge 𝐒𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐁𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐡: 29.33 ft. • 13th highest on record • Record: 53.00 ft. on August 3, 1869 🔗 https://water.noaa.gov/gauges/SRGT2 The tragedy is appalling enough as it is, and I hope the dozens of people who are still missing are found. We don't need the added effect of idiots champing at the bit to finger-point and place blame on people—in this particular case, Republicans—they don't like. Stop exploiting natural disasters because you view the world through hyperpartisan political lenses.

Thank you for your very informative post, #4! Visiting my son in the Houston, TX, area and my daughter in the Austin, TX area, I noticed 'dry reservoirs' in both places. My understanding is that these were built to absorb -to 'pond'- water from heavy rains and let it drain away at a controlled rate, to reduce damage and fatalities from storms like this one that just went through. Apparently this happened enough times in decades past that the land was purchased and the impoundments built for just this purpose. I recall years ago reading in one of Mark Twain's books describing his adventures out west, an account of a similar flood. Twain and his companions were camped near a small stream and some nearby Indians broke camp, warned Twain's group -his quote, if I recall from 50 years ago- them saying "By-and-by, Heap Water!", then everyone headed for higher ground. Sure enough, after a while, the small stream turned into a raging torrent. Let us pray that they find the missing people safe and unharmed.

I suspect the reason these camps were able to acquire this beautiful property is because no one can get an insurance company to insure any home built there. The camps took the risk because there was very little construction to lose at the camp. But the real risk they were taking was loss of life.

Recent flooding events have proven FEMA to be another useless government agency that has made a lot of money for a lot of people, none of them flood victims. That lesson should have learned way back in the Katrina days.

Thank you # 4 for your authoritative observations. They deserve to be a separate post listed among the "Must Reads" Editors?