San Antonio had 13 deaths and Texas Hill Country has at least 43 deaths. Texas Hill Country is the Guadalupe River in a steep valley west of Austin, TX. The area was suffering from a serious drought, but they did not need 6-12" of rain in 1-2 hours starting at 4am. Hunt and Kerrville were hit hard by the tidal wave of water that came down the river while people were sleeping. In Kerrville, the river rose 30' (9m) in 45 minutes. Of note is the Christion all-girls Camp Mystic because, of the 400 campers, 23 were reported missing after the water swept through the camp.
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| Meteorologist Chris Vickers posted I have no words. Here is what the Guadalupe river in Kerrville, TX normally looks like vs Fourth of July morning after catastrophic and deadly flash flooding. The river rose 23 FEET in just over 2 hours in Kerrville overnight. The river was less than 1 foot last night (0.3 feet) and soared with a torrent of raging water to 23.4 feet by morning. Heartbreaking to hear 13 confirmed fatalities and over 20 still unaccounted for -- many children, young girls feared swept away by flood waters at Camp Mystic on the Guadalupe river. Prayers that many of the missing may still be found safe! 🙏 |
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| Patty Gonzalez commented on Chris' post Patty Gonzalez: This was the river just last week. Bone dry. I was there visiting family and we were walking the river bed. I’m praying my uncle‘s house doesn’t get flooded. |
Chris' photo shows that the river was close to touching the bottom of the TX-16 Bridge that is in the background of this view of Louise Hays Park. Obviously, most, if not all, of the park was under water.
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| Steet View, Jun 2013 |
Needless to say, this celebration was cancelled because during the morning of July 4, that pavilion was under water.
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| City of Kerrville, TX - City Hall posted 0:10 video GEARING UP FOR A FUN DAY AT THE 75TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION FOR LOUISE HAYS PARK Come join us!! |
This reel contains a time lapse of the water rising to swallow that pavilion. Fortunately, it would have been designed to withstand floods and probably just needs a good pressure washing.
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This reel provides the river level information. The river had been less than 20cfs. Would that even get your shoes wet?
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As I mentioned, and Patty's photo above illustrates, the area had been suffering a serious drought. (I'm avoiding the official terms of severe and extreme because different places in this area had different levels of serious drought.) The good news is that the reservoir lakes are low, and they should be able to handle the rush of water. The bad news is that the drought has dried out and backed the soil so that it doesn't absorb the rainfall. This reel provides some information on the drought. Canyon Lake is the first reservoir downstream from this flood. It had plenty of storage to contain the flood water.
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This reel summarizes the flood down in San Antonio, and I can skip all of the previous reels I saw about San Antonio.
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The Llano River also received a lot of rain.
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| City Kyle posted 0:11 video via Dennis DeBruler |
And the Colorado River is running very heavy.
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| cbsaustin, (Photo/Spicewood Fire Rescue) via Dennis DeBruler |
The rest of these notes are about the flooding along the Guadalupe River.
I really wished they had indicated which bridge this was taken from. And I wonder if the water later went over the bridge.
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| Kris Smith: Upper Guadalupe River Fishing - Kerrville to Canyon Lake posted 1:18 video |
Later, he zoomed out and you could see that the water was close to the bottom of "this bridge." I determined that "this bridge" was the Veterans Memorial Highway Bridge. The houses in the video would be on the left side of this excerpt.
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| Satellite |
The G Street Bridge in Kerrville
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| Jacob T Ramirez posted 0:28 video G Street Kerrville |
As the camera turned to the right, it appears that the water used to be on this side of a building near the bridge.
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| Same video |
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| Kimberly Banks Long posted 0:28 video This is Centerpoint bridge right off of 27 which no one ever thought would flood after they built it much higher than the previous bridge!! |
Another view of the debris on that bridge. It was up over the banks.
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| Kimberly Banks Long posted 0:51 video "This is the High Bridge that they built even higher after the 1987 flood." |
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More OMGs. I think I would have turned off the windshield wipers. Note at the bottom of the screenshot that the water is up to the steering wheel.
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The reporter in the following reel says that the owner said that there were 33 RVs and mobile homes parked in this facility, and they all got swept away.
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| CBS News Texas posted 1:08 video That RV wrapped around the tree is from an upstream RV park. There was no clue of a problem at 2:30, but at "3:30 they were hit by a 24' [7m] high wall of water." |
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| FOX Weather posted 0:28 video Nearly 50 RVs and tiny homes were washed away from a campground by the Guadalupe River in Kerrville, Texas, after a "deadly flood wave" surged down the river on Friday and wiped out virtually everything in its path. https://www.foxweather.com/.../catastrophic-flooding... [This looks like Blue Oak RV Park, so it was "just" 33 RVs and homes. The foxweather article has a gallery of 25 photos, but the captions are worthless.] |
Another view of the Blue Oak tragedy.
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| Blue Oak Trading Company posted 0:22 video Praying for all. Our sister company Blue Oak RV Park is totally devastated. |
This RV park is further from the river.
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| Comfort RV Resort posted 0:47 video Major flooding.. 31’ crest! |
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| Comfort RV Resort posted 0:24 video Mandatory evacuation |
After you watch this guy sling a lot of mud onto his RV on his way out, you see near the end of the video that they had a dozer on the property that could have pulled him out.
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| Sabrina Stout Hinkle posted 0:55 video |
Where I live, "air raid" sirens now mean a tornado warning. In Comfort, they mean you should evacuate because the river is rising.
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I saw a few reels of this home floating downstream with people still inside. At the beginning of this video you can see people standing in the doorway.
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Man, it is bad enough to watch cars float down a river, but to watch houses move is unreal.
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It was daylight by the time the water reached Comfort, TX. I presume this view is from the I-10 Bridge.
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| KABB FOX 29 News, San Antonio posted 0:36 video |
It is a good thing that bridge is bluff-to-bluff over a large flood plain because it needed all of that height and breadth to pass the flood waters.
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| Street View, Aug 2023 |
San Angelo also got hit hard even though both rivers through town have dams on the upstream side of town.
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| Jeremiah Stewart posted 0:18 video Irving street on the riverwalk in Downtown San Angelo is impassable alongside many other area roadways throughout the Concho Valley. If you have to be out and about this morning you’ll want to give yourself plenty of time to navigate a plethora of road closures. Stay safe! 🎥 Penny Dawson FOX West Texas |
The above bridge caught my eye because the downstream river level is so much lower than the upstream level. The small opening in this view explains the difference between the water levels --- the "bridge" is effectively a dam.
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| Street View, Jun 2022 |
The water level was the same in an Aug 2019 view, but we see more of the opening in this view.
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| Street View, Nov 2012 |
The danger of government officials crying "wolf" too frequently.
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| AccuWeather posted 0:48 video A Kerrville resident recounts her escape from the deadly flash flooding that claimed 24 lives and left more than two dozen missing in central Texas. http://bit.ly/40F4JMC |
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| Jeremy Baker - KENS 5 posted 0:15 video [I haven't been reading the comments on these videos, but this one caught my eye.] Pam During Hossack: I saw on FB a boys cabin floating down the river with the boys in it. Anything about those boys? [Responses indicated that the Eagle Scouts got the other boys up in the rafters and they were all rescued after the cabin was snagged by a tree.] |
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I had noticed there were other camps close to rivers when I was looking for Camp Mystic: Camp Honey Creek For Girls, Camp Stewart For Boys and Camp La Junta. The floating cabin was from Camp La Junta.
In fact, there are 18 camps in the area. [reel]
They had at least 14 helicopters searching for people and rather soon at least one girl was pulled out of a tree.
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But it took quite a bit longer to find these girls.
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Update:
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| Meteorologist Jacob Lanier posted In the wake of Friday's deadly flash flood disaster, I wanted to share this NOAA map showing how Texas is the most prone to deadly flood events. FLASH FLOOD ALLEY is what the Texas Hill Country is unfortunately known as, where more flood deaths happen than anywhere in the country. FOX4 News Kansas City |
"Number of deaths in central Texas flash floods rises to 78 as sheriff says 10 campers remain missing." [YouTube] Why does the sheriff never talk about the families in the RVs?
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| Texas Storm Chasers posted |
The death count is now (Jul 7) over 100. [YouTube] I'm not watching the videos anymore because I'm disgusted when an official says they are going to find everybody since no one has answered the question of how many are missing. Let alone who is missing. It wasn't just the girls camp that got wiped out. For example, how many of the families in the Blue Oak RV Park have been found?
July 7:
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Meteorologist Chris Vickers posted UPDATE: The Guadalupe River at Hunt flash flooding crest was updated to 37.52' an ALL TIME record crest. Even more incredible, the flow of the river went from a trickle (~1,000 CFS) to over 185,000 CFS -- the equivalent to at least TWICE the flow of Niagara Falls per second -- in just over 2 hours. |
Jul 8: "109 confirmed dead and 161 known to be missing after Central Texas floods, Gov. Greg Abbott says" [YouTube title]
There were also bad floods in North Carolina and New Mexico this week.
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| 8:51 video |
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