re: Texas floods

Looks like lake travis has risen about 18' over the last 3 days. Glad to see the lakes around there able to handle this excess runoff

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I watched that video a couple of times and it’s unbelievable how within 30 mins the water can be 20+ feet below and swell to almost overtopping the bridge.

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And not just the height but also the width. That is a lot of water.

It happens very fast in that part of the state It's so rocky in a drought, it's even harder and the water soak in at first,, its slides across it ... and fills the low spots,, and this sat and didn't stop

very Harvey like except so quickly

and to think these kids experiencing it ,, some of them without their parents for the first time

Some of the photos that are popping across my Facebook feed of age-appropriate clothing dropped on tree limbs
Perhaps use an identification

These people the first responders the searchers I can't imagine I wouldn't be strong enough

Just got home (Georgetown) a few hours ago and took a walk to look at the damage. The walking path from my apartment to the river is covered by 5-8’ of stone (river rock). Frankly, it’s unbelievable the amount of earth that was moved by the rushing water.

Lots of missing trees and top soil to be seen. The south Austin avenue bridge was under construction for resurfacing. The decking and scaffolding that was setup under the bridge for the project is strewn a mile downriver. Workers were out today picking up and sorting the debris into reusable and trash.

My apartments are built on a peninsula between the north and south forks of the San Gabriel river. They converge just east of the apartments. Having lived a large portion of my life in Louisiana, to me, forks have always been where rivers split and go off in two or more directions. Here, the north and south forks converge into one San Gabriel river. I don’t know about you, but that seems strange to me.

Anyway, the south fork (major fork) is what has been shown in most of the videos. To my amazement, the north fork barely swelled. There was some back flow from the south fork at the convergence, but it was strangely minimal.

Besides the amount of earth movement, the craziest thing (imo) is how quickly the water receded. The crest was at 1pm yesterday and photos I got from neighbors showed the water was gone by/before 5pm. We’re talking about a 100 yard wide, 30+ foot deep river dropping to 5 foot deep (still flood depths) and ~25 foot wide in ~4 hours. That’s incredible (to me).

With S&R going on and the casualty count rising, my thoughts and prayers are with those families. Seems strange to be heading back to work in the morning.

Please don’t use chat gpt for this bullshite.

Pro tip - take what it says and summarize so it doesn’t look so obvious. Remove the em dashes as well.

This is fooling nobody.

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They had like 15” of rain in less than an hour over a pretty wide area.

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Come on dude.

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The National Weather Service provided over 12 hours of advance notice via the Flood Watch and over 3 hours of lead time for Flash Flood Warnings, with escalated alerts as the storm intensified.

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The overall setup was forecast well be the WPC, NWC, and the local NWS Austin/San Antonio office. The what wasn't the issue with this setup. The where, as far as specific areas goes, was. They just aren't going to nail particulars with a setup like this one, at least not with the lead time a lot of the public has grown accustomed to.

There are no nits to pick with the forecasting. There was no shortage of personnel that hampered monitoring and response. The issues with the weather balloon launch shortages aren't in play because this area is still well covered in that regard. The EAS push notification system worked by accounts from those in charge. NOAA weather radios, which would have covered gaps in cellular coverage, were up and working as intended. The people trying to turn this into a condemnation of NOAA/NWS cuts are doing so disingenuously, and those who don't know better are gobbling that up thanks to our political climate these days.

The only legitimate gripe I have is with messaging, and that is common to some degree or another on many red letter weather events. Direct, in situation, public-facing messaging from the NWS Austin/San Antonio office lacked a sense of urgency, in my opinion. That said, things happened so quickly that even they likely weren't aware of the extent of the danger in real time. Given that this began at night and on a holiday weekend when the normal weather spotter network was probably not as well represented in the field, there just weren't as many eyes on the developing situation as they would normally have.

The tone struck in the warnings prior to the FF Emergency being issued wasn't wasnt dire enough, I don't think, at least not enough to rouse a sleeping public to action. By the time the FF Emergency was issued things deteriorated so quickly that the time for action shrank to near zero. This is as much a question for the sociology side of the equation as much as the meteorological side. Messaging can always evolve, but it is a slow progression.

Early warning systems on the rivers (or more of them) could help. Though, keeping the system of weather monitoring stations we already have functional is a big issue already without adding more to the equation. That problem will likely get worse before it gets better, though.

Anyway, this wall of text is nothing more than extemporaneous rambling, so I will leave it there to be parsed out by those with skin in the game later.

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At 10:13 in the video. Is that someone in a pink shirt yelling and floating with/on the debris on the right side of video?

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A little later a blue object comes floating down. It gets close enough to see that it's a plastic bucket or jug. I can't say for certain, but I've watched that clip several times and it didn't look like a person to me.

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The tone struck in the warnings prior to the FF Emergency being issued wasn't wasnt dire enough

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How many people turned off their emergency alerts years ago, due to constantly being bombarded by silver alerts for places seven hours from where we live, etc? For just weather alone, it feels like a special weather statement gets issued at least once every 2 weeks, at least in Houston.

I obviously didn't get any of the flood alerts due to distance, but didn't they make the imminent threat to life fairly clear?