Contributing Weather Factors to Fatal Texas Flood

While responders in South Central Texas are still recovering bodies due to a sudden rain deluge and flash flooding event on the Fourth of July weekend, USDA meteorologist Brad Rippey explains what happened with the weather.

“A lot of times with these flash floods, what you see is some component of tropical moisture being injected into a weather system. We saw a unique combination of factors that included remnant moisture from Tropical Storm Barry. We had had hurricane Flossy in the Pacific a few days before, and some of that tropical moisture had been drawn northward by the North American monsoon circulation. So we effectively had this pool of tropical moisture, both from the Atlantic and Pacific basins, parked over

Texas”

Rippey says that drought was a contributing factor.

“This particular area of Texas has been dealing with significant drought for about three years. So if you look at Kerr County, where most of the flood fatalities occurred, that area has seen either d3 or d4 in that county for more than three years, with the exception of four weeks in the fall of 2024 so you go all the way back to March of 2022 part of Kerr County has been in either extreme or exceptional drought, and in some cases, a protracted drought, consistency of almost concrete. The soils become less receptive to water retention, and so that may have contributed to increased runoff when that rain came down so heavily.”

USDA Meteorologist, Brade Rippey.