the Floods in Texas Tell Us About Climate Change
Digest more
"Let's put an end to the conspiracy theories and stop blaming others," Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said in a statement.
"These are roughly one-in-1,000-year events, [and] would be extremely rare in the absence of human-caused warming,” one climate scientist says.
This is false. It is not possible that cloud seeding generated the floods, according to experts, as the process can only produce limited precipitation using clouds that already exist.
Texas Hill Country is no stranger to extreme flooding. In the rugged, rolling terrain it’s known for, heavy rains collect quickly in its shallow streams and rivers that can burst into torrents like the deadly flood wave that swept along the Guadalupe River on July 4.
Radar data can estimate rainfall to a fairly accurate amount. The rain data in the case of the deadly tragedy that unfolded in the Texas Hill Country last weekend shows exactly why the area around Camp Mystic and the Guadalupe River, outside of San Antonio, had such a raging flash flood.
Climate change is making severe storms worse, heightening the need for the development of advanced forecasting models, but severe storm research is on the chopping block.
There was little indication of how torrential the Texas downpours would become before dawn. At least 27 people were killed, many of them children at Camp Mystic.
Meanwhile, anguished parents waited for word on the 10 young campers still missing from Camp Mystic, which was hit hard by floodwaters.
Some regions in the mid-Atlantic are also facing risks of flooding. On Sunday, Tropical Storm Chantal flooded parts of North Carolina, where more than 10 inches of rain fell near the Chapel Hill area. The Haw River, near Bynum, North Carolina, crested to nearly 22 feet, the highest crest on record there, as a result of those heavy rains.