The situation remains very bad, with a significant potential to get much worse.
The official death toll from the catastrophic floods that hit the Texas Hill Country rose to 27 as of Saturday morning, according to the Kerr County sheriff’s office, as local and federal authorities continue the desperate search for survivors.
Among the 27 dead were 18 adults and nine children. Six of those adults and one of the children remain unidentified.
Twenty-seven girls from Camp Mystic, a Christian camp for young girls, were also still missing as friends and families posted desperate messages online seeking help locating them. Many more people could still be unaccounted for, officials warned.
“The unknown is how many people were here locally visiting, on vacation, doing other things in the community that we just do not have numbers (for),” Dalton Rice, Kerrville city manager, said during a news conference Saturday morning.
Meanwhile, the threat of flooding around Texas remained, and local, state and federal officials urged caution. More rain is expected Saturday in south Central Texas, with the possibility of an additional two to four inches over the area. Some isolated pockets could see as much as 10 inches, according to the National Weather Service.
[…]
About 10 inches of rain fell within a few hours, causing flooding along the Guadalupe River which rose 26 feet in 45 minutes.
The death toll in an area historically prone to major flooding has raised questions about whether people near the river, including many vacationers in town for the Fourth of July weekend, received sufficient warning.
The private forecasting company AccuWeather and the National Weather Service sent warnings about potential flash flooding hours before the devastation.
“These warnings should have provided officials with ample time to evacuate camps such as Camp Mystic and get people to safety,” AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter said in a statement that called the Texas Hill Country one of the most flash-flood-prone areas of the U.S. because of its terrain and many water crossings.
Local officials defended their actions Friday while saying they had not expected such an intense downpour that was the equivalent of months’ worth of rain for the area.
One National Weather Service forecast earlier in the week had called for up to six inches of rain, said Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management. “It did not predict the amount of rain that we saw,” he said.
However, Porter emphasized that people and officials should always take safety precautions when there is a potential for flooding.
“People, businesses, and governments should take action based on Flash Flood Warnings that are issued, regardless of the rainfall amounts that have occurred or are forecast,” Porter said. “Flash Flood Warnings indicate an immediate risk to life and property in the warned area.”
See here for the background. I’m writing this on Saturday afternoon, so we may know more by the time you read this. I’ll get back to the questions about what happened with the flood and what should have happened with the response shortly. All I can think about right now is the missing campers.
Right along one of the Guadalupe River’s bends, the Christian camp Camp Mystic has been a summertime haven for generations of Texas girls.
But after a sudden flood came crashing through in the early hours of July Fourth, it’s become the site of a tragedy pulling on the hearts of Texans across the state.
Green-roofed cabins housing hundreds of campers and staff dotted the area, which is lush with cypress and live oak trees. This summer, Camp Mystic hosted 750 girls between 7 and 17 years old — that’s more than half of Hunt’s population of around 1,300.
Campgrounds span over 700 acres in the heart of Texas’ Hill Country, making it a peaceful place for girls to spend weeks singing campfire songs and making ceramics. Since they’re right by the river, in between church services, they also learn how to kayak and fish for bass.
That river reached catastrophic levels in less than an hour overnight with little warning, rising 26 feet in just 45 minutes. Fast-moving flood waters swept homes and cars away, and for Camp Mystic, made it difficult for staff to move hundreds of girls to safer ground.
By Saturday morning, more than two dozen were still missing. Since the flood, city and state officials have been tirelessly searching for the unaccounted campers, using boats, drones and helicopters. Social media sites have been full of posts with photos of the missing girls, asking people to keep eyes out for survivors. Former campers are also sharing beloved memories and expressing heartache for mourning families.
“We will do anything humanly possible to find your daughter,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said to parents on Friday, adding that search and rescue teams are looking for survivors. A total of 14 state helicopters, 12 drones and 400 to 500 people on the ground helping with the search.
On Friday, the camp office sent a desperate message to families saying they sustained “catastrophic floods” and were working with rescuers. All power, wifi and water had been shut off at the facilities. The message stressed that parents of all children who were missing had been contacted.
“The highway was washed away so we are struggling to get more help,” the message said. “Please continue to pray and send help if you have contacts to do so.”
A brief glance at my Facebook feed tells me that I know a lot of Camp Mystic alumnae. That community is in a lot of pain right now, and my heart goes out to them. We sent our girls to Camp Allen a few times, and they loved it. I cannot fathom being in the position of these parents right now. All I can do is hope with all my heart that these girls are found safe.
The Chron has a look at the weather forecast in advance of the flood and the factors that led to it being as bad as it was.
On Thursday afternoon, the National Weather Service issued a flood watch for parts of the Hill Country and Edwards Plateau, which included Kerrville. The watch warned the public about widespread rainfall amounts of an inch to 3 inches but forecasters said they “can’t rule out isolated 5 to 7 inches” of rain possible for a few spots.
A similar flood watch was issued around San Angelo, which warned of “the potential for a lower probability but much higher impact flood event overnight.”
What unfolded early Friday morning exceeded those expectations by a wide margin. Thunderstorms developed in connection with a weak, slow-moving system of low atmospheric pressure. This system tapped into deep moisture from both the Gulf of Mexico and the remnants of Tropical Storm Barry, which had made landfall earlier in the week on Mexico’s east coast.
The high moisture levels fueled the formation of a mesoscale convective complex over the Hill Country overnight. This type of storm system is often long-lasting and can cause extremely high rainfall rates of more than 3 inches an hour.
Typically, storms that form in this part of Texas move rather quickly over the region, thanks to an active upper-level weather pattern and upper-atmospheric winds. This type of weather pattern leads to quick downpours that often end after 30 minutes or so.
However, in this case, the upper-level pattern was stagnant. With little movement in the atmosphere above, storms at the surface also stalled, dumping enormous volumes of rain over the same area for hours.
The slow movement is what caused rainfall totals to be so large. The National Weather Service issued a flash flood emergency just after 4 a.m. Friday morning, as storms had already dropped 5 to 10 inches of rain over south-central Kerr County over just a few hours.
More rain fell in the hours that followed, with radar-indicated rainfall totals reaching up to 15 inches across south-central Kerr County.
Weather forecasting has come a long way, as the improvement in numerical weather models has caused daily forecasts to become much more accurate over the past few decades.
However, as any meteorologist will tell you, forecasting for flooding events is extremely challenging. It’s easy to tell when there will be a chance of flooding over a wide area — hence why flood watches were issued Thursday afternoon, well ahead of Friday morning’s storms. However, it’s extremely difficult to pinpoint exactly where a catastrophic flooding event like this will happen.
Simply put, weather models often struggle with slow-moving mesoscale convective complexes. They’re often relatively disorganized, lack upper-atmospheric support and lack a clear center. These factors make it harder for a weather model to lock in on how a system is moving and evolving.
It’s also near impossible for weather models to predict exactly where the heaviest rainfall bands will set up within a complex of thunderstorms. A few miles can make a huge difference about whether a town gets light rain or a life-threatening flood. On Friday, the bull’s-eye happened to be over south-central Kerr County, causing the Guadalupe River to flood its banks.
It sounds like this was a bit of a Hurricane Harvey situation, in that it was the combination of an extremely wet storm that stuck around in one place rather than moving through the region, which in turn caused most of that water to end up in a smaller region. I’m sure we will learn more about the specifics of the storm as we proceed. There’s clearly a lot to learn so we can be better prepared for the next one.
As far as the preparations for this one are concerned, Matt Lanza from Space City Weather and The Eyewall has some answers.
The warnings
Flash flood warnings were issued for areas before midnight as radar rain totals began to inflate up and over 3 to 4 inches. A flash flood emergency was issued at 4 AM for the Kerrville storms and 4:15 AM for storms near San Angelo. Rain totals were estimated to be encroaching on 10 inches at that point. So there was warning. This NWS office is acutely aware of the threats to the area from flooding, and the history is there. So I am assuming they were timely warnings unless I hear otherwise.
Issuing the warning is half the process. Were the warnings received and acted on? That’s another story. And that will also come out in the days ahead. More on that below.
Did budget cuts play a role?
No. In this particular case, we have seen absolutely nothing to suggest that current staffing or budget issues within NOAA and the NWS played any role at all in this event. Anyone using this event to claim that is being dishonest. There are many places you can go with expressing thoughts on the current and proposed cuts. We’ve been very vocal about them here. But this is not the right event for those takes.
In fact, weather balloon launches played a vital role in forecast messaging on Thursday night as the event was beginning to unfold. If you want to go that route, use this event as a symbol of the value NOAA and NWS bring to society, understanding that as horrific as this is, yes, it could always have been even worse.
What should we be asking about then?
Beyond the fact that this was truly a tragedy that is extremely difficult to disseminate warnings on, 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.
It’s not as if catastrophic flash flooding is new in interior Texas. There are literal books written about the history. The region is actually referred to as “Flash Flood Alley.” But how we manage that risk is crucially important context here. Are there sirens in place? Do there need to be sirens in place? Would people even hear sirens in the middle of the night in cabins or RVs or wherever they were? Tornado sirens have traditionally been used in parts of the country for people outdoors to get warnings. Is that an appropriate method in this region for the middle of the night and indoors?
Do we need to start thinking of every risk of flooding in Texas as a potential high-end event we should pre-evacuate the highest risk people (like children and elderly in floodways) for? Is that even practical? We can critique the answer given by the Kerr County judge here all day, but he’s correct in that the reality is they deal with flooding a lot. What is actually practical? I don’t know the answers to these questions. But it’s been a little over 10 years since Wimberley, which was a wake up call in some ways too. It’s time for another, and we need to think much bigger than just the areas impacted this time and more about Flash Flood Alley as a whole. Flooding risk is high in Texas. People learn to live with it in some ways. But something like this absolutely cannot happen again. The Texas legislature meets for a special session beginning on July 21st. This may be an important topic to add to the agenda.
I’ve seen plenty of people connect the DOGE cuts to NOAA and the NWS to this tragedy. That was my initial inclination as well, but it seems that there’s more nuance to it, so please take that into account. I have to wonder what kind of reception from certain corners of our government and the Internet the Kerr County Judge would be getting if he were something other than a white male Republican. Be that as it may, I would not expect there to be anything on the special session call to address any of this. They didn’t do anything about CenterPoint and Hurricane Beryl. Why would you expect anything different this time?
Here’s a link for the Kerr County Flood Relief Fund, if you are looking to make a donation.
UPDATE: Oof.
Dick Eastland, the director of Camp Mystic, was among the dead from Friday’s historic Guadalupe River flood.
Eastland’s nephew, Gardner Eastland, confirmed the death in a Facebook post on Saturday.
His wife, Tweety, was found safe at their home.
May he rest in peace. And may this be as bad as it gets for the camp.
WHAT DOES GROK HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THAT
“The cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS) by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under the Trump administration significantly impaired the agency’s ability to provide accurate and timely forecasts, which likely contributed to the severity of the Texas flood disaster on July 4, 2025. Here’s how these cuts played a role:
Conclusion: The consensus among critics, including Texas officials and experts, is that the understaffing and reduced resources likely contributed to the forecast’s underestimation of rainfall and the delayed local response. This was particularly critical in a region known for flash flooding, where timely and accurate warnings could have prompted earlier evacuations at Camp Mystic and other vulnerable areas, potentially reducing the death toll of at least 43, including 15 children.
My family moved to the Hill Country when I was 7, so I’m familiar with many of the lovely spots near the rivers and understand the appeal of building homes, resorts, camps, etc. there. I went to some of those camps in the summer. I can also go to places now bare and remember which building stood there until this or that flood hit it. Just like we’ve had the “should we build there?” discussion in this region, they need to start doing it much more seriously in the Hill Country. Better to enjoy the river by day and sleep on higher ground.
I also have a lot of trust in Matt Lanza concerning weather. The blame DOGE temptation is strong, and unfortunately the more nuanced argument that we need more weather research funding instead of less because this tragedy could have been worse is getting drowned out. I peeked at social
Media and backed away because damn there is a lot of ugly.
“ Just like we’ve had the “should we build there?” discussion in this region, they need to start doing it much more seriously in the Hill Country. Better to enjoy the river by day and sleep on higher ground.”
This. They built sleeping cabins too near the river, presumably to allow for more campers and more money coming in. It is always a $cash calculation/gamble. Everyone lost the bet.
I’m seeing 67 as the latest death toll, with a dozen still missing. I wish we lived in saner political times.