Here’s what to know about the deadly flooding, the colossal weather system that drove it and ongoing efforts to identify victims.
Flash floods in Texas killed at least 129 people over the Fourth of July holiday weekend, including girls attending a summer camp, and left others still missing. On Monday, Camp Mystic confirmed at least 27 campers and counselors had died in the flooding.
The devastation along the Guadalupe River, west of Austin and northwest of San Antonio, has drawn a massive search effort as officials face questions over their preparedness and the speed of their initial actions.
Here’s what to know about the deadly flooding, the colossal weather system that drove it in and around Kerr County, Texas, and ongoing efforts to identify victims. Massive rain hit at just the wrong time, in a flood-prone place
The floods grew to their worst at the midpoint of a long holiday weekend when many people were asleep.
The Texas Hill Country in the central part of the state is naturally prone to flash flooding due to the dry dirt-packed areas where the soil lets rain skid along the surface of the landscape instead of soaking it up. An area of cliffs and steep hills called the Balcones Escarpment is also a factor.
„When warm air from the Gulf rushes up the escarpment, it condenses and can dump a lot of moisture. That water flows down the hills quickly, from many different directions, filling streams and rivers below“, Hatim Sharif, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at The University of Texas at San Antonio, wrote in an article in The Conversation.
In addition to the geography, multiple weather factors contributed to Friday’s heavy rainfall, meteorologists say.
„First and foremost, you had Barry“, a tropical system that had made landfall in eastern Mexico early last week and was weakening, CBS News Philadelphia meteorologist Kate Bilo said Monday.
Moisture from that system was lifted northward „right on up into Texas“, Bilo said. There were also other weather systems — a low-level jet stream and an upper-level disturbance — adding more moisture.
„Nothing was really moving so you just had all of this rain coming down over the same areas and heavy, heavy rainfall rates because of all of that deep, deep moisture in the atmosphere“, Bilo explained.
After a flood watch notice midday Thursday, the National Weather Service office issued an urgent warning around 4 a.m. that raised the potential of catastrophic damage and a severe threat to human life. By at least 5:20 a.m., some in the Kerrville City area said water levels were getting alarmingly high.
