How Terrain in Texas Hills Turned Stalled Rainstorm Into Flood Disaster

Water cascaded down cliffs and swelled waterways when shallow soil failed to absorb the deluge

By Eric Niiler of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"A combination of steep terrain, shallow soil and a moisture-laden weather system that stalled over the Texas Hill Country caused the flash floods that killed at least 79 people Friday.

The weather system that caused the flooding was fueled by moist air from the coastal plain that swept up the Hill Country’s steep cliffs, condensed overhead, and for hours cascaded down those same cliffs. Narrow canyons then funneled the coursing water into creeks and rivers that rose and turned into deadly flash floods."

"Once a rainstorm develops, there is little place for the water to go. It’s a semiarid area covered by a shallow layer of soil over bedrock. The ground doesn’t absorb much rainfall, and runoff can cause shallow rivers and creeks to rise quickly, Sharif said."

"“We had a weak upper level disturbance from the west that helped destabilize the atmosphere and provide ascent of air in central and south central Texas,” Nielsen-Gammon said. “The last ingredient we had was a wind profile that allowed the storm to sit in place and redevelop over the same location for an hour or more.”

A separate low-pressure system fed the storm from the north."

"Up to 18 inches of drenching rain fell over a three-hour period early Friday in some locations."

All posts on this topic:

How Terrain in Texas Hills Turned Stalled Rainstorm Into Flood Disaster: Water cascaded down cliffs and swelled waterways when shallow soil failed to absorb the deluge 

The Texas Flood Green Herrings: Blame cruel nature, not DOGE, or weathermen, or climate change 

Why It’s So Hard to Link Extreme Weather Events to Climate Change: Attribution science examines how global warming fuels extreme weather, but making the connection is challenging 

The Texas Floods Were a Natural Disaster, Not a Policy Disaster: There's no evidence that cuts to the National Weather Service impacted the response to the weekend's tragic flash floods

 

 

The Texas Flood Green Herrings

Blame cruel nature, not DOGE, or weathermen, or climate change. 

WSJ editorial. Excerpts:

"The region has long been dubbed “flash flood alley” because its topography turbo-charges the effect from storms. Its dusty hills and limestone don’t easily absorb precipitation, so runoff can rapidly rush into creeks and streams."

"Such events have happened every 10 to 20 years and typically during the summer."

"local authorities for unknown reasons didn’t evacuate the flood-prone areas. Precipitation came harder and faster than the NWS predicted and than local officials were prepared for."

"More than four months of rain fell within a few hours in Kerr County"

"The river surged by more than 20 feet in 90 minutes. Flash flood alerts were issued late Thursday night and increased early Friday, though by then many were asleep."

"there’s scant evidence that staffing shortages at NWS affected events. The local NWS office had extra staff on duty last week and upgraded its precipitation models and forecasts repeatedly" 

"For the most part, state and local authorities seem to have improved their emergency management and preparation, as the death rate from floods dropped by about two thirds from 1958 to 2018."

"there’s no indication that extreme precipitation in “flash flood alley” or the U.S. overall has been increasing."

"The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded in 2021 that “there is limited evidence and low agreement on observed climate change influences for river floods in North America.”"

All posts on this topic:

How Terrain in Texas Hills Turned Stalled Rainstorm Into Flood Disaster: Water cascaded down cliffs and swelled waterways when shallow soil failed to absorb the deluge 

The Texas Flood Green Herrings: Blame cruel nature, not DOGE, or weathermen, or climate change 

Why It’s So Hard to Link Extreme Weather Events to Climate Change: Attribution science examines how global warming fuels extreme weather, but making the connection is challenging 

The Texas Floods Were a Natural Disaster, Not a Policy Disaster: There's no evidence that cuts to the National Weather Service impacted the response to the weekend's tragic flash floods

 

 

Why It’s So Hard to Link Extreme Weather Events to Climate Change

Attribution science examines how global warming fuels extreme weather, but making the connection is challenging

By Eric Niiler and Matthew Dalton of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"the science gets murky when they try to determine whether any one storm—or heat wave or drought—was fueled by global warming."

"scientists at ClimaMeter . . . concluded . . . hat global warming likely intensified the rainfall by as much as 7%." [but how much impact did that 7% have in terms of how high and fast the waters rose and how much loss of life and damage it caused-the article did not say]

"the group acknowledged major limitations to its study. Remnant moisture from Tropical Storm Barry stalled over the region and repeatedly fed rainfall, making it hard to compare the weather pattern to historical data." 

All posts on this topic:

How Terrain in Texas Hills Turned Stalled Rainstorm Into Flood Disaster: Water cascaded down cliffs and swelled waterways when shallow soil failed to absorb the deluge 

The Texas Flood Green Herrings: Blame cruel nature, not DOGE, or weathermen, or climate change 

Why It’s So Hard to Link Extreme Weather Events to Climate Change: Attribution science examines how global warming fuels extreme weather, but making the connection is challenging 

The Texas Floods Were a Natural Disaster, Not a Policy Disaster: There's no evidence that cuts to the National Weather Service impacted the response to the weekend's tragic flash floods

The Texas Floods Were a Natural Disaster, Not a Policy Disaster

There's no evidence that cuts to the National Weather Service impacted the response to the weekend's tragic flash floods

By Christian Britschgi of Reason. Excerpts:

"NWS has contradicted claims that it was understaffed in the run-up to the weekend's floods.

"We had adequate staffing. We had adequate technology," Greg Waller, service coordination hydrologist with the NWS West Gulf River Forecast Center in Fort Worth, told The Texas Tribune. An official with the NWS union also told the Tribune that local staffing was adequate to provide timely warnings.

Independent meteorologists have also defended NWS's performance.

Texas meteorologist Matt Lanza writes on his Substack that "we have seen absolutely nothing to suggest that current staffing or budget issues within [the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] and the NWS played any role at all in this event."

Lanza writes that while federal officials' weather modeling and forecasts of rains from earlier in the week underpredicted the eventual flooding, these models and warnings were also periodically revised upwards in advance of Friday's flood.

The timeline of NWS warnings also shows that it was providing advance notice of increasingly dangerous conditions in the areas that eventually experienced flash flooding.

The agency issued a flood watch on Thursday afternoon, a flash flood warning by 1 a.m. on Friday (about an hour after rains started), and a flash flood emergency urging evacuations at around 4 a.m.—about an hour before the most serious flooding occurred.

There did appear to be some delays when those NWS warnings were transmitted to the public via social media by local officials.

Lanza says that the weekend's tragic deaths from the flood resulted not from inadequate advance warning, but seemingly rather from people on the ground not responding fast enough to the warnings they were receiving.

"I think we need to focus our attention on how people in these types of locations receive warnings. This seems to be where the breakdown occurred," he writes on his Substack.

Getting people to respond quickly and appropriately to flash flood warnings, Lanza notes, is a difficult task, especially given that the weekend's flood occurred in the wee hours of the morning when most people are inside and asleep. That means they were less likely to see text warnings of the impending disaster.

More generally, meteorologists who spoke to Wired stressed that precisely predicting how much rain will fall from a thunderstorm, and where it will fall, is extremely difficult. There's always some element of chance involved.

That complicates when to warn people of potential flooding. It also makes it harder to get people to take flood warnings seriously.

More frequent and more ubiquitous extreme weather warnings can backfire, as anyone who's ever ignored a "tornado" or "flash flood" text alert on their phone should be able to appreciate.

The more warnings one receives about a disaster that doesn't end up happening, the less likely they are to take the next warning seriously.

It's worth noting, too, that even given central Texas' history of flash floods, the weekend's floods were still an outlier event.

As one meteorologist told Wired, the amount of rainfall central Texas witnessed in a six-hour period exceeded the 1,000-year rainfall rate, meaning there's less than a .1 percent chance of that happening in a given year.

Even the best emergency management systems will struggle with outlier events like that.

The Texas floods are, in that sense, reminiscent of the Los Angeles wildfires from earlier this year. Just as central Texas floods with relative frequency, so too does the Los Angeles hinterlands burn with relative frequency.

Like the weekend's flooding, this year's L.A. fires were more severe than normal, and thus caught people off-guard and overtaxed the systems designed to prevent and respond to them."

"Likewise, advance weather warnings, better local responsiveness, and more weather sirens can all reduce the death and destruction from flash floods. They can only do so much in the face of a 1,000-year flood that causes a river to rise 30 feet in a few hours in the middle of the night during the prime recreation season."

"The fact that the Trump administration's cuts to NWS didn't affect this most recent disaster in Texas doesn't tell us much about the wisdom of those cuts.

One could argue the agency is functioning well, despite having fewer staff, and that's proof that there was fat to cut at NWS."

All posts on this topic:

How Terrain in Texas Hills Turned Stalled Rainstorm Into Flood Disaster: Water cascaded down cliffs and swelled waterways when shallow soil failed to absorb the deluge 

The Texas Flood Green Herrings: Blame cruel nature, not DOGE, or weathermen, or climate change 

Why It’s So Hard to Link Extreme Weather Events to Climate Change: Attribution science examines how global warming fuels extreme weather, but making the connection is challenging 

The Texas Floods Were a Natural Disaster, Not a Policy Disaster: There's no evidence that cuts to the National Weather Service impacted the response to the weekend's tragic flash floods

 

When Towns Rebuild From Disaster, Some Get Priced Out (federal aid facilitates displacement and gentrification)

In Panama City, Fla., and Paradise, Calif., money poured in after natural disasters, squeezing some residents out. The dynamic is repeating across the U.S.

By Arian Campo-Flores, Cameron McWhirter and Paul Overberg of The WSJ.  Excerpts:

"Government aid and insurance payouts deliver an infusion of investment. Rebuilt homes become sturdier. Property values rise, infrastructure is upgraded and some neighborhoods get makeovers.

“A natural disaster can be a galvanization moment for a community,” said Allan Branch, the mayor of Panama City.

Yet the upheaval pushes others out. Poor residents have a tougher time navigating bureaucratic procedures for disaster aid and weathering job losses. Renters often get evicted from damaged properties and face spiraling rents as the supply of units shrinks. Low-income homeowners frequently struggle to pay for repairs that must comply with stricter building codes and to buy sufficient insurance coverage.

“Social inequalities are exacerbated after a disaster,” said Kathryn McConnell, a sociology professor at the University of British Columbia who has studied how destructive wildfires affect migration.

One study of the Paradise Camp Fire earlier this year found that the more than $1 billion of federal aid aimed at recovery “facilitated displacement and gentrification by enabling socially advantaged previous and new residents to return and rebuild.”"  

Once again, it's not the climate, it's the fuel: More foresters step forward to correct the record on wildfires

By Jason Hayes of The Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

"The largest fire recorded in the U.S. was the Miramichi Fire in Maine, in 1825, which burned 3 million acres. Four of the ten largest fires reported in the United States occurred in or before 1910. The remaining six all occurred after 2000. The most devastating forest fire is the Peshtigo Fire, which occurred in October 1871 in Wisconsin. That single fire killed over 1,200 people and burned up to 1.5 million acres.

With several sources listing massive burns — more than one million acres —in the past two centuries, it’s interesting that the Fire Center’s data is limited to the past 40 years. For that additional information, the internet Wayback Machine is a helpful resource. A look at one past iteration of the Center’s website shows that up until December 2020, the National Interagency Fire Center showed wildfire data going back to 1926. This additional data reveals a great deal about the nation’s wildfire history.

U.S. wildfires have dropped dramatically over the past century, in both number and total acres burned.

 

Despite the wide variability in the fire record, forest managers and fire modeling experts who are willing to speak out have argued that climate both is and is not a major factor in wildfires. As the redacted data on the Fire Center’s website indicates, our perceptions of trends in fire behavior depends on when we start counting.

Published information on wildfires will often motivate trained foresters to reach out. McKitrick’s Financial Post article “prompted an interesting email…from an experienced forester,” he noted in a June 16 Tweet.

"As someone who works in forestry and has worked fires, and been evacuated due to fire, I have looked into the data, and it bothers me to no end how ‘the science’ is ignored.” They continue, “Climate change doesn’t make fires more intense, fuel loading does.”

The Mackinac Center has similar experiences. Our June piece on wildfires, “Only who can prevent forest fires?” explains, “Wildfire science confirms a basic fact: Dry weather tends to dry out materials that fuel and intensify wildfires. But climate change is not to blame for this year’s or any year’s wildfires.”

That is the case, even though “more and more, ostensibly settled climate science aches to point out that there’s nothing climate change can’t do. Whether you’re worried about increasing or decreasing temperatures, increasing or decreasing precipitation, increasing or decreasing wildfires, climate change appears to have you covered.” But “forest management policies play the key role in determining whether wildfires increase or decrease in number and intensity.”

We’ve received emails from foresters who say they agree with our forestry work. Refusing to allow active management and failing to suppress fires immediately have heightened fuel loading conditions. Heavy fuel loads ensure that, when a fire does start, and fire crews are not immediately able to stop it, it is likely to explode into an intense conflagration that burns everything.

These massive fires can effectively take areas back to the earliest of seral stages—bare mineral soil conditions, similar to when the glaciers retreated. From there, it can take decades for the land to transition from mineral soil back to grasses, to shrubs, and then to trees and forests.

People should be skeptical about the climate change hysteria that reemerges during every wildfire season. Instead, they should focus on active forest management practices, including harvesting, spacing and thinning, as well as prescribed fires. These practices implemented prior to dry years would reduce fuel loading and lessen the likelihood of a major fire. This would do far more to protect forested lands than locking them up in preserves and hoping lightning never strikes."