LANSING, Mich. (WLNS) — Flash flooding has become a buzz word in the news lately after devastating flash floods in Central Texas, a region known as the Texas Hill Country, hit last week, killing more than 100 people.

Flash flooding can happen anywhere and at any time. The National Weather Service (NWS) says that flash flooding is any type of flooding that starts to occur after 3 to 6 hours of heavy rainfall, often from thunderstorms. Flash floods are so dangerous because they combine the power of a flood with incredible speed. The flash floods in Texas caused the Guadalupe River to rise from 2 feet to more than 24 feet in as little as 45 minutes.

Flash floods occur when the intensity of rainfall and the duration of the rain combined with environmental factors like topography, vegetation types and the soil water content level can determine how quickly flash flooding occurs.

According to the NWS flash flooding is the number one storm related killer in the United States. The national 30-year average for flood deaths is around 127 people per year.

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The Associated Press stated that the Texas Hill Country is naturally prone to flash flooding events due to the dry dirt packed landscape that lets the rain “skid along the surface of the landscape instead of soaking it up”. On top of that there was more moisture from the remnants of tropical storm Barry was over the area.

Forecasting flooding events is extremely challenging because it’s so hard to pinpoint an exact location where the flooding will happen. On top of that forecast models struggle with the set up that was unfolding in Texas, slow moving mesoscale convective complexes, and determining where the heavier bands set up.

NWS offices had mentioned the flood risk in the forecast a day earlier and issued flood watches by Thursday, July 3rd. In a social media post NWS Austin/San Antonio said, “local heavy rainfall could cause flash flooding.” Later that evening, the NWS upgraded the flood watch to a flood warning, and eventually a flash flood warning.

Remember that a flood watch is used when the conditions are favorable for flooding but does not mean that it will occur. While a flood warning means that flooding is imminent or already happening.

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More than 3 trillion gallons of water had fallen across the region. Much of it surged into the Guadalupe River, officials state that the crest reached higher than the historic 1987 flood.

Let’s put that in perspective, 3 trillion gallons of water is equivalent to the amount of water used in every home in the United States for a year. It is also about 1.5 million Olympic swimming pools worth of water and is about the same amount of water that flows at Niagara Falls in a month.

Can climate change be to blame for causing this flash flood in Texas? Well a warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapor which is how showers and storms are formed, the more water vapor present the heavier the rain can be. So while it is not the main cause it certainly can influence flooding impacts.

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The search for more than 170 people still missing after flash floods devastated Central Texas stretched into an eighth day on Friday. At least 122 people have been confirmed dead, according to local law enforcement and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

Ongoing search operations were underway to find anyone lost in the debris after the catastrophic July 4 storm, which caused the Guadalupe River to swell rapidly to near-unprecedented levels.

There are 161 people known to be missing in Kerr County alone, officials said. The county, located in the flood-prone Texas Hill Country west of Austin, the state capital, bore the brunt of the disaster. At least 10 more people were missing in other parts of the state.

President Trump signed a federal disaster declaration at Abbott’s request, allowing the Federal Emergency Management Agency to deploy its own teams to support local rescue and recovery efforts as those operations press on. More storms after the initial flooding made efforts especially challenging, officials said.

On Friday, July 11, one week after the disaster struck, Mr. Trump arrived in the region to meet with officials, rescue workers and the families of victims.

“I’ve never seen anything like it, a little narrow river that becomes a monster, and that’s what happened,” Mr. Trump said. “But the first lady and I are here in Texas to express the love and support and the anguish of our entire nation in the aftermath of this really horrific and deadly flood.”

Camp Mystic tragedy

A large majority of the flooding deaths occurred in Kerr County, where officials have confirmed at least 96 people died.

At Camp Mystic, a girls’ summer camp with cabins along the river in a rural part of Kerr County near Hunt, at least 27 campers and counselors died in what the camp described as “catastrophic flooding.” Some survivors said they woke up to water rushing through the windows.

Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said Wednesday that crews continued to search for five missing campers and one counselor from Camp Mystic.

One child not associated with the camp is also missing, Abbott said Tuesday.

Items lie scattered inside a cabin at Camp Mystic after deadly flooding in Kerr County, Texas, July 5, 2025. Reuters/Sergio Flores

Hundreds of rescuers, including teams from local, state and federal agencies, as well as volunteers, are involved in the search, Texas Game Warden Ben Baker said Tuesday during a news conference.

“It’s very tragic whenever you see human life. But to see a child in that loss of life, is extremely tragic,” Baker told a reporter who had asked about the impacts on rescuers’ mental health.

Abbott said Tuesday he received a text message from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that said the Department of Health and Human Services is set to declare a public health emergency for the Texas Hill Country flash floods.

“This will make it easier for health care and mental health providers from out of state to help both by traveling to the area and by telemedicine,” Abbott said the message read.

26 feet of water rose from Guadalupe River

Friday, July 4, was the last time a missing person was found alive in Kerr County, according to authorities. But search crews continued to survey miles of the Guadalupe River in the hope of locating others who may have been lost in the floods that inundated Kerr County, Baker told reporters.

The river runs for approximately 230 miles through a region that sits between Austin and San Antonio, starting in Kerr County and ending along the Gulf Coast. It’s nicknamed “Flash Flood Alley” because the terrain makes it vulnerable to inundation.

Officials in five other Texas counties have also confirmed deaths in the flooding: Travis County, which includes Austin, as well as Burnet, Kendall, Williamson and Tom Green County.

During the early hours of July 4, the Guadalupe River in Hunt, in Kerr County, rose to about 26 feet — roughly the height of a two-story building — over the course of just 45 minutes, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said during a news conference.

Camp Mystic was “horrendously ravaged,” Abbott later wrote in a social media post after visiting the site. About 650 people were staying there, including around 550 children, according to inspection records released by the Texas Department of State Health Services, which were dated July 2 — just two days before the flood.

Map shows location of Camp Mystic in Kerr County, Texas. CBS News

According to the records, Camp Mystic had “a written plan of procedures to be implemented in case of a disaster,” which was “posted in the camp’s administrative on-site office.” But exactly what the plan contained isn’t clear. Unlike at least one other camp along the Guadalupe River whose employees spoke to The Associated Press, Camp Mystic did not evacuate to higher ground ahead of the floods.

Kerr County officials said Wednesday that evacuating from Hill Country is not always the best course of action during a storm, echoing an earlier statement released by a joint information center established in the wake of the floods, which said that disaster responses in the Hill Country terrain are complex.

Rural areas, like Hunt, are full of single-lane bridges known as “low water crossings” that easily flood and create scattered “islands” of land that are impassable, said Johnathan Lam of the police department in Kerrville, a city in Kerr County. Those same locations have inconsistent cell service and are hard to reach for first responders.

“In Hunt, Highway 39 crisscrosses the Guadalupe again and again and again,” Lam said. “And all of those low water crossings, when they flood, they create islands where you can’t get in and you can’t get out, trapping people in their homes, trapping people in their vehicles. And that’s what happened on the morning of July 4.”

A makeshift crew consisting of two Kerville officers, an emergency room doctor and some volunteer firefighters did what they could to fulfill the duties of a robust response team for 13 hours that first day, until emergency workers in high-profile vehicles were able to reach them at around 5 p.m., Lam said.

Scrutiny over weather forecasts

Whether communities in the path of the flooding received adequate warnings has been heavily scrutinized and is the subject of ongoing debate. Kerr County officials have largely declined to respond to reporters’ inquiries on the matter during their daily news conferences.

Some have questioned if the Trump administration’s cuts earlier this year to the National Weather Service and its parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, potentially prevented local forecast offices from sufficiently preparing the public for the extent of the flooding.

Mr. Trump and his team have repeatedly rejected any suggestions that federal firings impacted forecasting or emergency preparedness ahead of the floods.

A CBS News analysis found that 22 warnings from the National Weather Service were issued for Kerr County around the storms and flash flooding, which used escalating language as time went on. But some local residents said they did not receive emergency alerts on their phones nor did they understand how serious the situation had truly become until it actually happened.

Search and rescue personnel look for missing people along the Guadalupe River on July 7, 2025 in Hunt, Texas. CBS News Texas

The San Antonio and San Angelo weather service offices issued warnings for the areas affected by flooding. Officials with the union representing National Weather Service workers told CBS News there are 23 meteorologists staffed between those offices, which together have 10 vacant positions.

In San Antonio, the office is missing a warning coordination meteorologist, a vital role that essentially liaises between forecasters and emergency management agencies in the region to plan how information about an extreme weather event will be disseminated to the public, and which steps to take to protect them.

Nim Kidd, the chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, said his office received a forecast Wednesday that predicted several inches of rain, but “the amount of rain that fell at this specific location was never in any of those forecasts.”

Dalton Rice, the city manager for Kerrville, in Kerr County, said during the same briefing that the storm “dumped more rain than what was forecasted.”

Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said at a news conference July 4 that the county does “not have a warning system” in place to alert the public about weather emergencies. County officials had previously discussed a public alarm system but did not proceed with it because of the cost. Former Kerr County commissioner Tom Moser told CBS News the county had applied for a grant in the past to build the system but the application was not approved.

“If they can’t afford to do it, then let us do it,” Lt. Gov. Patrick said Monday, noting that the state could offer resources for Kerr County to implement a system. “We have a special session starting two weeks from today, and I think we can take that up and do some other things of funding these sirens. … If there had been a siren, maybe that would have sparked people to say ‘Oh, we have a massive disaster like five minutes away.'”

When asked about the emergency warnings on Tuesday, Abbott said everything would be discussed at the state Legislature session.

“We’re going to address every aspect of this storm to make sure we’re going to have in place the systems that are needed to prevent deadly flooding events like this in the future,” he told reporters.

The board of the Upper Guadalupe River Authority had secured funding and a contract to begin developing a flood monitoring system for the area, with preliminary meetings about the project scheduled for mid-July, according to the joint information center set up since the floods. That project aims to create a “centralized dashboard to support local flood monitoring and emergency response,” a spokesperson for the center said in a statement to CBS News.

“While real-time streamflow and rainfall data are already available through various sources, this new tool will bring those datasets for Kerr County into one platform to enhance usability for emergency managers,” the statement said, adding, “This is not a public alert system, but a decision-support resource intended to complement existing infrastructure.”

Everything we know so far about the deadly Texas floods

Flash floods in Texas killed at least 122 people over the Fourth of July holiday weekend, including girls attending a summer camp, and left others still missing. On Monday, Camp Mystic confirmed at least 27 campers and counselors had died in the flooding.

The devastation along the Guadalupe River, west of Austin and northwest of San Antonio, has drawn a massive search effort as officials face questions over their preparedness and the speed of their initial actions.

Here’s what to know about the deadly flooding, the colossal weather system that drove it in and around Kerr County, Texas, and ongoing efforts to identify victims.

Massive rain hit at just the wrong time, in a flood-prone place

The floods grew to their worst at the midpoint of a long holiday weekend when many people were asleep.

The Texas Hill Country in the central part of the state is naturally prone to flash flooding due to the dry dirt-packed areas where the soil lets rain skid along the surface of the landscape instead of soaking it up. An area of cliffs and steep hills called the Balcones Escarpment is also a factor.

“When warm air from the Gulf rushes up the escarpment, it condenses and can dump a lot of moisture. That water flows down the hills quickly, from many different directions, filling streams and rivers below,” Hatim Sharif, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at The University of Texas at San Antonio, wrote in an article in The Conversation.

In addition to the geography, multiple weather factors contributed to Friday’s heavy rainfall, meteorologists say.

“First and foremost, you had Barry,” a tropical system that had made landfall in eastern Mexico early last week and was weakening, CBS News Philadelphia meteorologist Kate Bilo said Monday.

Moisture from that system was lifted northward “right on up into Texas,” Bilo said. There were also other weather systems — a low-level jet stream and an upper-level disturbance — adding more moisture.

“Nothing was really moving so you just had all of this rain coming down over the same areas and heavy, heavy rainfall rates because of all of that deep, deep moisture in the atmosphere,” Bilo explained.

After a flood watch notice midday Thursday, the National Weather Service office issued an urgent warning around 4 a.m. that raised the potential of catastrophic damage and a severe threat to human life. By at least 5:20 a.m., some in the Kerrville City area said water levels were getting alarmingly high. The massive rain flowing down hills sent rushing water into the Guadalupe River, causing it to rise 26 feet in just 45 minutes.

Death toll is expected to rise as dozens remain missing

Gov. Greg Abbott said there were dozens of people unaccounted for across the state and more could be missing.

In Kerr County, home to youth camps in the Texas Hill Country, at least 96 people, including more than 30 children, have died, officials said Thursday.

There were 161 people known to be missing in Kerr County as of Tuesday, Abbott said, and at least 12 people were missing in other parts of the state. The missing included five girls and a counselor from Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp along the river, as of Tuesday, Abbott said during a news conference. One child not associated with the camp is also missing, Abbott said.

The campers who died include 8-year-old Linnie McCown of Austin, 8-year-old Eloise Peck of Dallas and 9-year-old Lila Bonner of Dallas, their families said. Chloe Childress, an 18-year-old counselor from the Houston area, also died in the floods, according to the Kinkaid School, where she had recently graduated.

A search and rescue volunteer holds a pink backpack and a “Camp Mystic” T-shirt in Comfort, Texas, on July 6, 2025. “I hope I find the person to return their belongings, not to find closure,” he said. Photo by Danielle Villasana for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Camp Mystic’s owner and director, Dick Eastland, died while trying to save girls at the camp, according to local media reports. The obituary section of the Kerrville community news site was dotted with tributes to victims, including Eastland.

Officials face scrutiny over flash flood warnings

Survivors have described the floods as a “pitch black wall of death” and said they received no emergency warnings.

Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly, who lives along the Guadalupe River, said Saturday that “nobody saw this coming.” Various officials have referred to it as a “100-year flood,” meaning the water levels were highly unlikely based on the historical record.

And records behind those statistics don’t always account for human-caused climate change. Though it’s hard to connect specific storms to a warming planet so soon after they occur, meteorologists say a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture and allow severe storms to dump even more rain.

Additionally, officials have come under scrutiny about why residents and youth summer camps along the river were not alerted sooner than 4 a.m. or told to evacuate.

Officials noted that the public can grow weary from too many flooding alerts or forecasts that turn out to be minor.

Kelly said authorities were shocked by the ferocity of the floods. “We had no reason to believe that this was gonna be any, anything like what’s happened here. None whatsoever,” Kelly told “CBS Evening News.”

Kerr County officials said they had presented a proposal for a more robust flood warning system, similar to a tornado warning system, but that members of the public reeled at the cost. Tom Moser, a former Kerr County commissioner, told CBS News the county had previously applied for a grant to build the system, but it wasn’t approved, leading to concerns about the local budget if the county were to try to fund the system alone. He also noted there was local resistance over the possibility that the sirens could inadvertently be triggered, causing unwanted noise in the community.

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick told CBS News on Monday that the state could possibly step in to fund the system.

“If they can’t afford to do it, then let us do it,” he said, adding: “We have a special session starting two weeks from today, and I think we can take that up and do some other things of funding these sirens.”

On Sunday, officials walked out of a news briefing after reporters asked them again about delays in alerts and evacuations.

Search for victims and monumental cleanup

Crews are searching urgently for the missing. Volunteers, search dogs and drones have joined the effort, with some rescuers maneuvering through challenging terrain filled with snakes.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a social media post that the U.S. Coast Guard was responsible for saving more than 200 people, as dramatic video showed Guard members conducting aerial rescues near Kerrville while dark water covered the ground.

The flash floods have erased campgrounds and torn homes from their foundations.

“It’s going to be a long time before we’re ever able to clean it up, much less rebuild it,” Kelly said Saturday after surveying the destruction from a helicopter.

Other massive flooding events have driven residents and business owners to give up, including in areas struck last year by Hurricane Helene.

President Trump signed a major disaster declaration Sunday for Kerr County and said he would likely visit Friday: “I would have done it today, but we’d just be in their way.”

“It’s a horrible thing that took place, absolutely horrible,” he told reporters.

At the Vatican, Pope Leo extended a prayer to the flooding victims during Sunday Mass, saying: “I express my sincere condolences to all the families who have lost loved ones, in particular their daughters who were at summer camp, in the disaster caused by the flooding of the Guadalupe river in Texas in the United States.”

✕ Close Trump brands reporter ‘evil’ for asking if warnings could have saved kids’ lives in Texas floods

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Kerr County officials reportedly failed to activate a powerful public alert system that could have saved lives before last week’s devastating flood.

The Washington Post revealed that despite having the technology to turn every mobile phone in the river valley into a loud alarm, local authorities did not deploy it as the Guadalupe River swelled to record levels on July 4, inundating campsites and homes.

The system, which costs nothing, was implemented instead of an expensive siren system that county officials reportedly couldn’t get funding for.

It has also emerged that at Camp Mystic, where 27 campers and counselors perished in the floods, FEMA had removed dozens of buildings from flood hazard maps after an appeal, likely to lower insurance costs and be subject to less arduous regulations, the Associated Press reports.

On Friday, Donald Trump visited Kerrville, Texas, to assess the damage from last week’s devastating flash flooding. The president and First Lady Melania Trump met with rescue workers involved in responding to the disaster.

There have been at least 129 deaths, and more than 160 people are missing, one week later.

Young girls were screaming and crying as floodwaters seeped through Camp Mystic’s Chatterbox cabin on July 4, according to 9-year-old twin sisters who were in the cabin.

“Everyone was like crying, and everybody was really scared. And everybody was holding all their stuff,” one of the twin sisters said. The campers’ mother asked CNN not to report the girls’ names to protect their privacy.

Because she had a top bunk, one of the twins told the other campers that they could keep their “lovies” and “stuffies” there for safekeeping until the flooding was over.

The twins said counselors at the cabin told them to climb out of the window to get to higher ground, after they saw a car that they thought would be rescuing them float away. When they got out, the water was up to their chests, the twins said.

“The water was really high, so we walked over, and the counselors were helping us get over,” one of the girls said.

When they got to higher ground, the counselors realized three of the girls from Chatterbox were missing, so they went back to search for them, the twins said.

“It was really, really scary because we didn’t know where they were. We didn’t know if they got, if they got washed away in the rapids. We didn’t know anything,” one of the girls said.

The twins said their counselors brought the girls water as they waited for “so long” for waters to recede and comforted them when they were all crying.

“Whenever we were cold, they kept giving us hugs and we were crying, they would always comfort us,” one of the twins said.

Later, the girls said they saw a rainbow, which they said was “a sign from God.”