Before dawn Friday morning, city manager Dalton Rice went for a jog along the Guadalupe River in Kerrville, Texas. He finished his run around 4 a.m. as a light rain set in. An hour later, he began receiving emergency calls: The river had flooded out of control.
Torrential rains were dumping into the Guadalupe. In just 45 minutes, the river surged about 26 feet (8 meters), sending walls of water sweeping into camps and RV parks busy with Fourth of July holiday visitors.
At least 82 people have died and scores are missing, including children, after the catastrophic flooding devastated an all-girls summer camp. With heavy rains still battering Texas on Sunday, politicians are questioning whether federal, state and local officials were adequately prepared.
The area remains at risk of further inundation as thunderstorms move through west central Texas, bringing pockets of very heavy rainfall in a short amount of time, according to the National Weather Service. Forecasters have extended a flood watch into Monday evening, warning that any additional rain “will almost immediately runoff due to the saturated grounds.”
Texas has been at the epicenter of extreme weather events in recent years. In 2024 alone, Hurricane Beryl knocked out power to millions, a windstorm punched windows out of Houston skyscrapers and a massive wildfire blazed across the Panhandle. The onslaught of disasters has come as warmer ocean waters and moister air, two results of global warming, add fuel to storms.
Climate change also makes it harder to predict the speed at which disasters can spin out of control, like in the Maui wildfires that killed dozens in 2023 and the “rapid intensification” that accelerated Hurricane Milton in Florida last year.
In Texas, the loss of life is so astounding that on Sunday search crews had to break down efforts into a grid pattern to recover bodies, Rice said during a news conference. “We have increased our number of personnel that are navigating the really challenging shores along the bank line,” he said.
