re: Texas floods

Went to pick up someone from the camp that was evacuated last night at Ingram Elementary. At 10pm (12-16 hours since the flooding started), there were buses of kids being dropped off and helicopters still landing and going back out.

Sounds like what they did to us in the 16 flood.

Also a terrible flood there in July 1978, as a result of remnants of Tropical Storm Amelia. It killed 33 people and caused catastrophic flooding in Kerrville, Comfort, and Hunt along the Guadalupe River; that event was eerily similar to the current disaster

As someone who lives in the area… rain was less than 20% on Thursday and Friday…. Each afternoon we have gotten some unusual afternoon rain earlier in the week… but nothing was forecasted.

Looking at some of the Austin area's rain gauges and some spots look like they're getting hammered LINK

Spicewood 4 S with 1.87" over the last hour
Marble Falls 14 SSE with 1.59" last hour, 3.12" last 3 hours
Bertram 8 SSW with 1.5" last hour, 17.34" last 24 hours

Lake Travis area has a giant orange/red thunderstorm overhead that hasn't moved it looks like in hours

I’m in Mont Belvieu, visiting my kids for the 4th. My phone has been getting blown up all day. I live on the San Gabriel in Georgetown.

My apartments are usually about 30’+ above the river.

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I live on the San Gabriel in Georgetown.

My apartments are usually about 30’+ above the river.

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Second highest level on record at 33.03 feet and record was in 1956. About 31 feet higher than the normal 2 feet.

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Historic Crests

1. 41.00 ft on 04-24-1956
2. 31.65 ft on 06-27-2007
3. 27.06 ft on 11-15-2001
4. 24.60 ft on 09-03-1981
5. 23.93 ft on 09-22-2018

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If we want to have a debate about placing campgrounds on a river or in a watershed, that seems to be a more productive conversation than blaming budgets

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This is what I agree with. On a news channel this morning they were interviewing a lady who had been a camper at this camp before. She said it was known for flooding. Two of the years that she went to the camp it flooded and they were stranded in their cabins and couldn’t go anywhere. She said one year they had to zip line food to the area she was housed in because of the flood waters. After hearing this my thoughts are if it’s that prone to flooding then the camp needs to be moved.

There can be no blame placed for this. This may be a once every fifty or hundred year event. It happened in the middle of the night and was not predicted (July, the driest month none the less). There are a lot of people that live in and around those valleys. The only thing I can think of to suggest is an alarm system like tornado sirens and emergency personnel to monitor the weather when rain is a possibility. And everybody needs to know where to go uphill. In some ways it is like a tsunami. The weather forecasters did not envision that much rain. For most of the past forty years people have lived peacefully in those valley. You have to realize that that the geography in that part of the world are raised plateaus that are cut down by rivers. It's those valley the original German or Czech farmers settled into.