The floods that ravaged Texas last week, leaving more than 105 people dead, occurred in a region known as Flash Flood Alley. And while the storm developed quickly, the National Weather Service offered what appears to have been a relatively good forecast in a rapidly developing situation, according to former Weather Service officials.
But despite known risks in the area and warnings that were first issued around midnight Thursday, the floods became one of the deadliest weather events in recent American history.
How did that happen?
It’s too early to say with certainty that the slow-moving thunderstorms were made worse by man-made climate change. But the weather pattern that unleashed more than 10 inches of rain in a matter of hours is precisely the kind of phenomenon that scientists say is becoming more common because of global warming.
“The atmosphere is like a giant sponge,” said Arsum Pathak, director of adaptation and coastal resilience at the National Wildlife Federation. “As the air gets warmer, which is what’s been happening because of climate change, the sponge can hold a lot more water. And then when there’s a storm, the same sponge can squeeze out way more water than it used to.”
Storms are becoming more intense
President Trump, thus far, has avoided casting blame for the storm’s death toll, and called the floods “a hundred-year catastrophe” in remarks to reporters on Sunday.
But Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, said the research showed that as the planet warmed, sudden outbursts of extreme precipitation were becoming more powerful.
In data that goes back to 1910, nine of the top 10 extreme one-day precipitation events have occurred since 1995, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
“These precipitation extremes — heavy downpours of rain, essentially — have already increased in most of the U.S.,” Swain said. “And, indeed, in most of the world. That is a confirmed observation about what has already happened in response to the warming that has already occurred.”
The forecast and the warnings
The storms that unleashed the floods developed quickly as a large area of tropical moisture moved in over central Texas.
While the National Weather Service delivered what experts said was a pretty accurate forecast of the emerging threat, many people in harm’s way during the Texas floods did not receive any warnings.
Part of the problem may have stemmed from staffing shortages at weather offices in Texas, according to former National Weather Service employees who spoke to Christopher Flavelle. On the ground, that meant “the loss of experienced people who would typically have helped communicate with local authorities in the hours after flash flood warnings were issued overnight.”
Another contributing factor may have been the lack of a flash flood warning system along the banks of the Guadalupe River. Officials considered installing such a system eight years ago, but ultimately decided against it, The Times reported.
But it’s also the case that even good forecasts have their limitations.
“It’s not possible to give extreme precipitation forecast with pinpoint accuracy hours or days in advance,” Swain said. “That’s beyond what is scientifically possible to offer.”
Instead, as the world keeps warming and extreme rain events become more powerful, it will be necessary for vulnerable communities to prepare for the perils of a hotter planet.
‘Flood, rebuild, repeat’
One reason the floods were so deadly is that the affected area, known as the Texas Hill Country, has very thin topsoil, an impermeable limestone bed, steep canyons and narrow valleys.
“It’s a recipe for flash flooding,” said Pathak, who is also a member of Texas Living Waters, a coalition of conservation groups that works on issues including climate change and flooding in the area. “It might have been a puddle in other parts of the country, but it became a really dangerous storm here, and it happened within a matter of minutes.”
Some measures that could help the Hill Country adapt, she said, included restoring creek banks with native plants and grasses, planting more trees and increasing permeable areas, all of which could help absorb rainfall and slow rising floodwaters. As The Times reported this week, Texas has a growing backlog of flood management projects, totaling some $54 billion across the state.
“Too much of our disaster strategy in general is very reactive in nature,” Pathak said. “It is time to replace that loop of ‘flood, rebuild, repeat’ with more forward-looking investments that keep people out of harm’s way.”
The Trump administration
Trump hires scientists who doubt the consensus on climate change
The Energy Department has hired at least three scientists who are well known for their rejection of the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change, according to records reviewed by The New York Times.
The scientists are listed in the Energy Department’s internal email system as current employees of the agency, the records show. They are Steven E. Koonin, a physicist and author of a best-selling book that calls climate science “unsettled”; John Christy, an atmospheric scientist who doubts the extent to which human activity has caused global warming; and Roy Spencer, a meteorologist who believes that clouds have had a greater influence on warming than humans have.
Their hiring comes after the Trump administration dismissed hundreds of scientists and experts who had been compiling the federal government’s flagship report on how climate change is affecting the country. The administration has also systematically removed mentions of climate change from government websites while slashing federal funding for research on global warming. — Maxine Joselow
Regulation
Trump wants to kill a chemical safety board. Chemical makers object.
In January 2021, after a nitrogen leak at a poultry plant in Georgia killed six workers and injured scores more, federal investigators arrived at the scene. The team, from a small federal agency called the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, traced the fatal leak to a freezer part that had been bent out of shape. A series of recommendations to improve safety followed.
Now, the White House is planning to eliminate the agency, allocating $0 for its budget starting in 2026. Even industry groups are opposed.
The plan to dissolve the safety board is another blow to workplace safety at a time when President Trump has already moved to make cuts at other federal agencies that protect workers. — Hiroko Tabuchi
One last thing
The sound of a dying glacier
When Lutz Stautner, a filmmaker, first heard Ludwig Berger’s recordings of a melting glacier, he could hardly believe they were real.
Berger, an artist, has recorded the melting Morteratsch Glacier in Switzerland for more than a decade in an effort to capture the sounds of a disappearing environment. For this Op-Doc by The Times, the two traveled together to record what it sounds like inside a glacier.
Watch the short documentary here.
More climate news from around the web:
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Flood deaths have risen in the United States in recent years, according to an analysis by The Washington Post.
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Reuters reports that Greece closed access to the Acropolis for several hours on Tuesday as temperatures hit 107.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
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The Trump administration may soon consider leasing vast areas of public land in Wyoming and Montana to coal-mining companies, according to The Associated Press.
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David Gelles reports on climate change and leads The Times’s Climate Forward newsletter and events series.
The post Why the Texas Floods Were So Deadly appeared first on New York Times.
