Posted on 07/05/2025 11:29:00 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
The National Weather Service issued a series of upgraded warnings in quick succession as rivers across the region began to rise.
Early Thursday afternoon, the National Weather Service issued a broad flood watch for parts of south-central Texas, including Kerr County, warning that a slow-moving storm system was expected to bring anything from scattered showers to intense storms through Friday morning.
Such warnings are common when conditions are favorable for a weather event, and are often followed by a warning when a dangerous event is occurring or about to occur.
And that’s what happened very early on Friday morning, when the Weather Service issued a series of upgraded warnings in quick succession. Rivers across the region were beginning to rise as storms dropped more and more rain — first, the San Saba River at 1 a.m. local time, and again at 5 a.m., followed by the Concho River and then the Colorado River. All three are expected to keep rising slowly through the weekend.
The Weather Service also issued warnings for flash floods as the storm’s impacts were becoming more clear. Unlike a slowly rising river, flash floods are sudden deluges that can occur after heavy rainfall with very little notice.
A little after 4 a.m., the Weather Service sent one of its most urgent alerts, a “particularly dangerous situation” warning, reserved for the most urgent and potentially deadly scenarios. It is meant to grab attention, and is most often used when violent tornadoes are nearby, but also for floods and wildfires. The warnings are often shared on the Weather Service’s social media accounts and broadcast by local news organizations.
At 5:34 a.m. local time, a “particularly dangerous situation” warning came for Kerr County: “Automated rain gauges indicate a large and deadly flood wave is moving down...”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
public investigations into seeding (chem-trails) are long overdue
weather forecasting was more accurate 50 years ago
So the NY Times doesn’t try to blame it on Trump?
You post that on a thread about it being accurate?
These late overnight weather events pose a big challenge of communications rather than forecasting, it’s not really possible to issue dramatic warnings 6 to 9 hours in advance of rainfall events of this magnitude, so if dramatic warnings occur at 0200h local time, almost nobody will be aware of them, unless they have some sort of dedicated radio or software, and even then, a lot of people are asleep when the warnings come through (as I think happened here).
This is not like a big hurricane bearing down on a coastline where time of day is irrelevant and everyone will be very aware of their presence. Probably all most of the people in the region heard the evening before, if they heard a weather forecast at all, would be ‘heavy rainfalls are likely overnight and there could be flood warnings issued.’ I doubt that anyone heard on their evening news ‘terrible catastrophic flooding is going to start late tonight before dawn.’ If you did hear that, you would perhaps do something to get to a safe place, or you might say ‘I don’t believe that so I will wait and see what happens.’
This river has had very fast water rises before and deaths from vehicles being swept away (as people were leaving flood prone areas). It seems like that part of the river valley needs a more elaborate warning system and better preparation in terms of protocols that officials (like camp directors) will follow when these warnings are triggered. Relying on what works elsewhere during daylight hours is not going to work the next time this happens either.
Flash flood awareness seems to be rather hit or miss across the country. The problem in assessing it is this — you can only count failures, successes (people who heed a warning, are aware of flood potential, don’t go into flood prone places like hiking into a Utah slot canyon in monsoon thunderstorm season etc) cannot easily be counted. Flash flood potential tends to be concentrated in a few river drainage areas, there are some rivers which will probably never unexpectedly rise this quickly or do this much damage. So these problem drainage areas need special protocols, there isn’t some one size fits all system that you can apply to the whole country.
There should have been one of the adults up in the middle of the night in order to be aware of this possibility.
Here’s a timeline of the catastrophic Texas floods
https://www.npr.org/2025/07/05/nx-s1-5457759/texas-floods-timeline
Appreciated.
That’s weather for ya.
Don’t sleep in a creek or river bed. Sleep well above the high water mark.
This incident has really brought the “weather modification” cult out of the woodwork.
Agree
That’s pretty much what I said on another post
Flash flood warnings? Then this should be a no brainer when you have younger campers near the river!
Then you have a watch team, every hour monitoring the weather, river sensors/alarms etc…
It’s not that hard to read a weather radar map
I’m assuming that they could have accessed the national weather bureau, or some similar service, to monitor the possibility of flooding.
If there isn’t such a service, the states should be developing one. Just in case. One in a million cases always happens, because somebody who should mindful isn’t being so.
I agree that one, preferably two, adults should have been up throughout the night. They could have each taken 2 hour watches, so it wasn’t too exhausting for them.
There are 750 campers at this place!
Unconscionable that the directors didn’t have at least one person on some type of watch!
I just don’t understand this, every adult just went to sleep?
There was clearly rain on the radar. I don’t care if light rain, this camp is in a flood zone..
Curious what the safety, evacuation protocols list on the camp contracts?
I assume parents have to sign a contract, waiver etc..?
I get severe weather alerts on my cell phone. I thought that was common.
With a camp that size, I would think that is a 7/24 operation. By the time the floods hit I would think the kitchen staff would be up ready to prepare breakfast and a few security people roaming the grounds as well as someone manning the front desk.
We don't know what happened. It is possible they heard the warnings, but weren't aware part of the camp was in the flood zone. I am sure this will come out at some point.
I'd go to the nearest hotel cuz they had a basement...and hang out in the lobby.
I have a portable radio.
It was really nasty out. They should have gotten the kids all out of there. But 20:20 doesn't help.
We need more common sense.
The major loss of life came on the Guadalupe river upstream of the Canyon lake reservoir. We live in subdivision alongside the river downstream of there. I received cell phone notifications when our section was in danger. Our home was not in danger as we are located at an elevation 400 feet higher than the river.
However, the notifications came as ordinary beeps on the phone like typical text messages and incoming information. It seems like a flash flood alert should get a major sustained louder than normal beep.
Since I do a lot of outside work, I check the radar several times a day, especially when it’s cloudy. But I understand this flash flood happened early in the morning when most people are still asleep. I’m an early riser, usually up by 5 - 5:30, but if it happened at midnight, I might be unaware. Thankfully our phones get alerts, but if a flood is in a very local area we may not. The creek that borders our property is on average maybe 20 ft. across. During a drenching downpour with 4 or more inches of rain the creek can be a few hundred ft. across and flood the road. What’s surprising is how quiet it can be. We don’t get alerts for the creek, only for the Delaware river.
Weather forecasters can’t get yesterday right.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.