there is a post further up about how we (societies) live close to; rivers, lakes, oceans and mountains etc and whilst they’re attractive and we will continue to want to be in those places, the fundamentals of many places are shifting with the changing climate and what we have to do to survive in those places is going to have to change - I suspect it is also going to fundamentally change how certain services are provided
you can not mitigage all risk, but the minimum actions required to mitigage risk are likely to change
Ah, yes. You are so smart, would have predicted all possibilities, and everyone else is over emotional. But why all the vitriol???emphasized text
Gross.
Noted that the historical news report made reference to 11” falling, against the forecast 6” in this current event. All other things being equal that’s a significant difference - like an event being classified as a 1 in 10 year occurrence vs 1 in 50 or 100 year. Note I’m not trying to state what frequency this specific event was.
It’s also important to understand that the duration over which that rainfall occurs is key. A catchment receiving 6” over 24 hours behaves orders of magnitude different to that same catchment receiving 6” over 6 hrs or less.
I have ridden hundreds of miles in the Texas Hill Country. Thought of retiring there for many years. Hundreds of miles of roads with no one on em. Not so much any more because several thousand other guys figured that out too. The first time I road out there was Easter 1976. It was a sunny day with dark clouds about 10 miles away. We came to a low water crossing with a couple inches of water over it. There were people on the other side of the crossing waving us off. By the time we made it across the water was knee deep. The guys behind us were looking to go. We were all yelling and waving no.
They made it about 3/4 th of the way across and were swept off their bikes. There were 5 of them and we managed to get them all out of the water safely.
We had another 60 or so miles to go so we went off and the riders without bikes got in a truck. Couple three hours later we had to cross back over the bridge again. Sort of wondered how we could get home. When we hit the bridge it was dry as a bone and you couldn’t tell a flash flood had even passed thru. They never did find any of the lost bikes as far as I know.
I am very cautious about low water crossings since that incident. As far as the locals, those camps have been in the “flood plain” for generations and never had a flash flood like that. Sort of like the folks in Asheville,NC. Who would have thunk they would have been blown out like they were? No one I knew did. Terrible incident both of those were. If your home or camp has been there almost a century without a flood like that, it is hard to point fingers toward wrong doing. Very sad and tragic event.
Yes. Like an inland tsunami.
I seem to have thought most people commenting (not you) knew what a flash flood is.
As @Bumble_Bee and I have said, and @Endo , this was a confluence of events that developed very quickly.
For ideas of the magnitude of this river flow, just scroll through. The Guadalupe River went from a flow rate of less than 100 cfs to over 70,000 cfs in 24 hours, with the worst of it in the middle of the night.
Inland tsunami is so apt a description.
We don’t have flash floods here, and quite frankly don’t think I’ve ever really seen one on video until now. I knew what they are but lack any familiarity with them.
But, I do live in an earthquake zone, a few blocks from the ocean, so tsunamis are very much party of disaster awareness here.
Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly told reporters on Saturday local residents have rejected the idea of a siren system due to its expense when it had been suggested before.
But what makes flash floods so hazardous is their ability to strike quickly, with limited warning. Around midnight on Thursday, the San Angelo and San Antonio weather offices put out their first flash flood warnings, urging people to “move immediately to higher ground.” The office sent out additional flash flood warnings through the night, expanding the area of danger.
It is not clear what steps local officials took to act on those warnings. A spokesman for the Kerr County emergency management department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Sokich said that the local Weather Service offices appeared to have sent out the correct warnings. He said the challenge was getting people to receive those warnings, and then take action.
I don’t know how much of this observation is hindsight, but the camp should not have been located where it was located. As a society we are devaluing a lot of things. If you do not build stairs to the right dimensions, thousands of people will climb the stairs successfully without incident, but more people will fall than what should have. Is that the stair makers fault? I don’t know, I think it is all of our fault.
