Hundreds remain missing in Texas as search and rescues continue after the horrific flooding that occurred in Kerr County. AccuWeather's Jon Porter explains the dangerous reality of flash flooding.
00:00There was a devastating rise, once again, of about 30 feet in the water level.
00:04And look at this video.
00:06If you didn't have a date and time on it, you might think that was from this particular week.
00:11But this was back from the Blanco River in 2015.
00:14A tremendous tragedy there as well with many people who tragically lost their life
00:19as the water rose very quickly and swept away homes and campers and things of that nature.
00:25So the point is that there's a long history of this.
00:28You mentioned as well the July 1987 flood along the Guadalupe River.
00:33That affected Comfort, Texas, and some of the same other communities that were hit by this flash flood.
00:38So flash flooding, unfortunately, has been part of the climatology and will be going forward in Texas and beyond.
00:47And, John, you know, it's important to understand terminology.
00:49You hear the term one-in-a-hundred-year flood, one-in-a-thousand-year flood.
00:54And it sounds like you can only expect flooding in that one location or any given location once every thousand years.
01:03That's not the exact and precise definition of that term.
01:09No, it isn't.
01:09And so it's very important to put that into context.
01:12Ariella built this great graphic to help explain this.
01:14And we love it because it describes what it is, which means that there's a 0.1% chance of that much rainfall in any given year when you look back at the climatological records.
01:28It does not mean that it's not going to happen again for a thousand years.
01:32So this is an indication that it's a low probability event, 0.1%.
01:37That's low.
01:39But it shows you when you get rainfall amounts that are that much, that indicates just how rare and unusual that event is.
01:46But it doesn't mean that it's not going to happen for another thousand years.
01:50We have before and after pictures, John, and they're just frightening of what happened in Hunt, Texas.
01:57I want to get your thoughts on it.
01:59This was right before the flooding, and then within several hours, it looked like this.
02:06Right, and I drew on the screen here the previous river channel for the Guadalupe River.
02:11Remember, this is many times a lazy, calm river, right, a beautiful river.
02:16You hear everybody talk about how beautiful this area is with that river, which is slowly moving water.
02:22But look at what happened after the flooding.
02:24Look at how much the water channel expanded with that wall of water that came down the Guadalupe River.
02:31And you can see all the tree and other debris here that were swept downstream, just devastating flash flooding.
02:38And the people that were at greatest risk were those right along the river.
02:42Because you notice, even back a few blocks, there doesn't appear to have been much damage.
02:46So that's why the people who lived right along that river were at greatest risk.
02:50And, John, how do we move forward?
02:53You're obviously part of the weather enterprise here.
02:57Every year, you and a team of meteorologists, including myself, go to the American Meteorological National Conference,
03:05where we meet with leaders within the meteorological field to try to prevent these kind of events.
03:13And I must say, the meteorological community is frustrated that this happened at all.
03:19It is.
03:19I can tell you that Weather Enterprise and here at AccuWeather, our hearts are with all the people,
03:25as we've talked about, that have been impacted by this.
03:27Because though there were very timely warnings, and we've talked about that here all week,
03:31flash flood warnings issued by the government's National Weather Service more than three hours before the peak of the flooding,
03:37AccuWeather expert meteorologists had alerted our customers and subscribers 30 minutes before in that area,
03:44providing even more advance notice.
03:45Even though those warnings, timely warnings, were in place, there was still a significant loss of life, a tragic loss of life.
03:52So it's important to point out that flash flooding remains in increasing danger,
03:56and that's getting worse from a climate change perspective as extreme rainfall events become more likely.
04:02We can't stop it.
04:03That's important to point out.
04:05However, what we've seen here, once again, although there was a tragic, a horrible, tragic loss of life,
04:10many lives were saved.
04:11So proactive actions based upon warnings save lives,
04:15and the importance to act right when warnings are issued and not wait for any other information.
04:19And another key point here is public officials and businesses must do everything they can do to take warnings and enact safety plans.
04:29Lives depend on it.
04:30And that looks like where there was a big breakdown in this particular situation.
04:34A lot to be studied about that going forward.
04:37AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter.
04:39John, thanks for joining us here on AccuWeather Early.
