As of the morning of July 7, the death toll of the devastating Texas flooding has climbed to at least 82 victims. AccuWeather's Jon Porter says floodwaters rose up to 30 feet in one hour on July 4.
00:00Meteorologist John Porter and you know John, let's go through the setup. Let's go right from the get-go here. What happened? We begin with the five-day rainfall here and this does capture the rainfall that fell Thursday night into Friday and you can see it is Central Texas that got the lion's share of the rain.
00:23That's right, Bernie, and we want to comment that our hearts are with all the people who have been affected by this tremendous tragedy. It is yet again another one in the long string of devastating and tragic flash floods across South Central Texas, the hill country here where several inches of rainfall you could see fell in a short period of time, west of I-35 in particular, and that's what led to this devastating flash flood where rivers that are normalized
00:53and this seemingly just lazy calm flow of water became torrents in the matter of an hour.
01:00Now, I want to show you this graphic and we can keep San Angelo there on the right-hand side. Just take a look at what happened at the Guadalupe River. Now, this was in Hunt, Texas.
01:10Notice at around 3 a.m., John, if I'm reading it right, around 7 feet. By the time we got to about 515, maybe 530 at the latest, pushing 30 feet. That's a rise of 23 feet in about a two-hour period of time.
01:27Yeah, that's the problem there. Look at this. It's like a hockey stick in terms of the height of the river. And remember, this is just not the water coming up. This is raging rapids. There is nothing worse than moving water.
01:41This type of a wave, a flood wave moving down the Guadalupe River, it's going to destroy anything in its path. And moving water has so much momentum. And it's just amazing what can happen.
01:55And that is what, again, is one of the main factors here that was involved with why there was so much destruction here is the river came up that fast.
02:04That's why flash flood warnings were issued with ample time for people to take action because this part of Texas has a history of exactly this.
02:14This has happened many times before over the decades and that's why this area is so dangerous.
02:19Yeah, they're in part of what we call Flash Flood Alley, John. And as you mentioned, it is part of the past and unfortunately it is part of the future in this area because of a unique set of conditions in this part of Texas.
02:34Yes, you have a lot of hilly terrain, lots of hills and valleys, and that water pours off the hills and into the lower elevations where there are a lot of low water crossing streams and creeks, close proximity to moisture from the Gulf and also the eastern Pacific at times.
02:50And a lot of times the steering winds in the atmosphere are slow.
02:53So these thunderstorms dump persistent heavy rainfall, torrential rain over the same areas for hours on end.
03:00And again, that's what happened here. This is why I call it the flash flood capital of the United States.
03:05And this is why people in this area need to be particularly aware of the flash flood risk and have a plan in place to take life-saving action based on flash flood warnings.
03:14John, I think it's important in order to understand how this happened, we go through the series of events.
03:19Of course, we have a very robust weather enterprise in the United States.
03:25It's the private sector like AccuWeather. It's the National Weather Service.
03:29It's academia all working together to produce and make sure that we are issuing forecasts in a timely manner.
03:38And we believe that did happen.
03:40Yes, and you look at what was out well in advance of this event the day before on the AccuWeather Premium Plus app.
03:46AccuWeather meteorologists issued a flash flood threat at 429 in the morning.
03:50And the National Weather Service later that day issued a flash flood watch indicating a heightened level of awareness about the risk for flash flooding in that area.
04:00Again, as we mentioned before in the AccuWeather Premium Plus app, that complements and extends the benefit of government warnings.
04:06When we can provide additional advance notice, AccuWeather expert meteorologists do.
04:10And that's what we did in this particular case.
04:12We also issued a flash flood warning to AccuWeather customers in that area 30 minutes before the government's National Weather Service issued one,
04:21which the Weather Service issued that at 114 in the morning.
04:25AccuWeather providing more valuable advance notice in that particular case as well.
04:28But look at both of these flash flood warnings were hours before the peak flash flooding occurred in that area at 430 in the morning.
04:36So their warnings were there.
04:38There was ample time to take action.
04:41The question is, what did local officials and officials charged with safety at the RV parks and also the campgrounds,
04:49what did they do with those warnings that would have been going off through cell phone alerting and other mechanisms?
04:54What did they do with the warnings in order to take action that was needed from a safety perspective?
05:00That is going to be the key question here as we move forward.
05:05AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter.
05:07John, thanks for joining us here on AccuWeather Early.
