Texas flood: living on a reckless earth

On the early hours of Friday morning on the US holiday of the Fourth of July a tragic flash flood (the “4th of July Flood”) fueled by a month of rain in a matter of hours left over 90 dead in the Hill Country area of Texas centered in Kerr County, dozens of these dead are young girls attending Christian summer Camp Mystic where former First Lady Laura Bush once worked, the dead include the Camp’s owner. 

The issue of climate change has been politicized by both sides here in the US, and this politization has resulted poor public policy that left our most vulnerable at risk as we have witnessed in this 4th of July Flood. It should not be surprising that a political ideology centered around free market and minimal government ideals pushes back against acting in response to the climate change thesis; frankly, this pushback should be the expected outcome, and those advocating policy change should understand the heavy burden and not themselves be critical of those who don’t yet accept climate change.  

Neither Trump nor Biden caused climate change and the inadequate planning we witnessed over July 4th weekend wasn’t Trump’s fault either – the much-discussed National Weather Service performed admiralty.  

Both sides of the US political isle can and should at least agree on policy that can better protect our citizens from the ever increasing and inevitable impacts of climate change. I claim that our citizens can be best serviced by agreeing that the climate has already changed so we need to expect worse than historical worst-case events and emergency plans need to be put in place common sense and immediately impactfully planning to mitigate these risks.  

It is NOT THE CASE that this flood was “the perfect storm”, and we should, therefore, just accept this horrific outcome as unavoidable. The “perfect storm”, the 100-year event in this “flash flood alley” occurred in 1987. We don’t know everything about the 4th of July Flood and much more information will become known, but we know quite a bit. 

A few observations about this 4th of July Flood: the flooding more severe, more rapidly forming, and more widely deadly than the prior 100-year worse case experience. These are the expected outcomes of the climate change thesis. 

We know this 4th of July Flood was more severe because the observable river level gages had equal or higher readings and one of these gages even stopped reporting as it became overwhelmed with the flooding itself. The Kerr County Executive Judge Rob Kelly said: “rest assured, no one knew this kind of flood was coming … We have floods all the time. This is the most dangerous river valley in the United States, and we deal with floods on a regular basis. When it rains, we get water. We had no reason to believe that this was going to be anything like what’s happened here, none whatsoever.” In Friday’s news conference, Kelly said the Friday flood “far surpasses the ‘87 flood."

The fact is climate change has well-known real-world impacts including the severity and frequency (more severe, more frequent) of severe storms and flooding (Eastern Kentucky 2022, Ashville 2024, and now the Hill Country Texas 2025 etc.), the increase of fire risk (LA fires of 2025 as one example), as more fully described in the 1,800-page Fifth National Climate Change Assessment. These expectations are more than model predictions, these outcomes are being observed in the current climate data, events occurring every week somewhere around the globe, and sadly on this 4th of July Flood.

We know the climate has changed. The change already happened. People need only to look out their own window, and the climate will continue to change further increasing risks to our citizens. Here is graphic of temperature in Austin, Texas, for example:

The probability that this modern temperature being natural variation: less than one in a trillion. This particular data set originated from a once climate skeptic, and going back to the dinosaurs doesn’t change the conclusion.

Specifically, here are the fingerprints of climate change on the 4th of July Floods: (i.) high sea surface temperatures 3° or 4° degrees above long term average in the Gulf of America, (ii.) very hot June 2025 air temperatures in Central Texas , (iii.) drought in the area prior to this event, (iv.) a stalled tropical event typical of the changed climate as the tropical storm made landfall and lingered. These characteristics are textbook indicators of climate change influenced weather events. 

Daniel Swain a climate scientist with the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, said the Central Texas rainfall this week was “precisely the kind of rainfall event scientists expect to become more common in a warming climate.” 

Hitting the issue head on: the conditions indicated by climate change were present during this July 4th Flood event, this event occurred with greater frequency than the historical data would indicate, and the event was more severe than ever experienced; the case that these factors were random or would have otherwise occurred is statistically possible but not plausible. 

Would the drunk reckless driver who passed out while driving have gotten into the accident if sober? Maybe but not likely. Most likely the accident was caused because the driver was drunk, driving recklessly, and passed out. In this analogy the Earth is the reckless drunk driver who passed out. 

The federal government has already in place the ability and systems provide the National Weather Service’s capability to perform its forecasting mission – including in Texas. I want to defend the people on shift at the NWS offices the night of July 4th.  By 1:30 am CT, Warnings were given, and by 3 am CT, the highest level of alert Emergency Warnings were given. This gave approximately two hours advance notice to the most deadly event.

Here is where the system failed: back to Judge Kelly’s comments – nobody expected this horrific outcome. Local emergency services and the local population expectations were based upon the historical experience. But history does not matter when it comes to the climate – the climate already changed, and current condition of the climate differs from the historical record. Each year will continue to differ more and more.  Looking at a completely different example, if a stock price is $50 per share one might expect the next day prices around that price initial price.  But if during the day, the company announced that they were being bought by a bigger company for $100, the price will jump to the new reality.  Our climate condition has jumped to a new reality – that of reckless drunkenness. 

In fairness to the local officials and residents, the climate change impact on our climate’s initial condition has outsized and hard to imagine impacts.  Mathematical chaos theory demonstrates that small changes in initial conditions have huge impacts on outcomes in chaotic systems. Here is the river flood gage readings for the Guadeloupe River at Kerrville: On July 4th, reading of 35 feet, flood stage at 9 feet, and major flood at 20 feet. In the twenty plus year historical record, there are no readings over 15 feet.

I propose a thought experiment: what occurred vs. an alternative world: the owner of the Camp Mystic summer camp clearly knew his property could flood, but presumably had no idea there could be a mass conflagration due to flooding.  He gave his own life in this tragedy in a heroic effort to protect his campers and staff.  He had no idea, this event was outside his range of experience, and he was very experienced. The same with the County government, they had no idea this could have happened.  

Consider an alternative world: the 6th National Climate Assessment (not yet written and currently not funded) is 300 vs 1800 pages, is understandable and free of an obvious political ideology, national political, state and local leadership all clearly understand the need to plan for worse than historical experience, identify high risk locations (which the Hill Country clearly is), identify the most at risk (for which Camp Mystic clearly is), and when there are Emergency Warnings, local emergency response reflexively acts in accordance with written plans and notifies the most at risk, that where indicated in written plans, evacuations are made. I would note that Camp Mystic had a night security staff. Furthermore, this response system – from NWS Emergency declarations to the person driving the evacuation bus must be practiced before disaster strikes inevitably in the middle of the night. 

Some say this planning happens. Clearly not in Texas nor Eastern Kentucky or Western North Carolina before these devastating floods. This level of emergency response is in place today for some risks in some places and works well even in climate skeptical Florida.  Where these existing systems fail is when the worse than worse case materializes. Better understanding our changing risks is an imperative subject of further research and clearly further and even increasing spending so we can improve our understanding of our changing environment – lives are at risk.

Note: the National Weather Service has lost 600 of NOAA’s 800 total DOGE related force reduction, the relevant offices in Texas are 22% understaffed, the 2026 Budget includes more than 20% further budget reductions, the shuttering of all climate related research with offices and departments shut and given zero budgets, all information on  climate change has been removed from the federal public systems (including the 5th National Assessment whose link is busted), data being collected by satellites is not being shared with researchers, the longest standing and important research site located in Hawaii is to close so that important data can no longer be collected, and the people working on the 6th National Climate Assessment (required by a 1990 law) have been told to stop work and there is no budget to complete.  Furthermore, the President of the United States is being told that the California wildfires were the result of poor forest management practices (the Federal government owns 49% of all the land in California and over 90% of the forest, and this narrative is otherwise not correct), and that this 4th of July Flood was natural variation (which is a one in a thousand probability and just wishful thinking). All the above not likely to withstand the test of time, and eventually not politically wise.  Pope Urbane XIII put Galileo (15564-1642) in jail for the rest for his life in disagreement with the flat earth theory.  Saint Pope John Paul II apologized in 1992.

We have the people in place, the technology in place or readily available, we only need to cross the political divide … The path forward, therefore, is difficult indeed, but an imperative as lives and property are at risk.  If crossing this divide is going to take less than the 350 years it took the popes, we cannot impugn the intentions or motivations of Republicans and realize that both sides of the political divide do not want our citizens harmed.  We are in for a wild ride on this drunken and reckless earth, and its best done realizing we are on this ride together and need each other’s cooperation.

illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability & Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.

Sources:

• KSAT reporting also found on www.ksat.com
• Crimmins, A.R.; Avery, C.W., et al., Fifth National Climate Assessment, 2023, NOAA, https://doi.org/10.7930/NCA5.2023
• https://illuminem.com/illuminemvoices/arguing-over-yesterdays-weather-is-a-very-poor-bet-iii
• https://showyourstripes.info
• https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/products/ocean/sst/anomaly/
• https://www.climatecentral.org/report/monthly-attribution-overview-june-2025
• J. Miller, et al., “Escalating Alerts of Dangerous Flooding Arrived When People Were Sleeping,” Wall Street Journal, July 6, 2025
• Miller 2025
• Crimmins 2023
• Keellings, D., & Hernández Ayala, J. J. (2019). “Extreme rainfall associated with Hurricane Maria over Puerto Rico and its connections to climate variability and change.” Geophysical Research Letters, 46, 2964–2973. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL082077
• https://nechama.org/updates/texas-flood-update/
• https://bsky.app/profile/wxmvpete.bsky.social/post/3lt6heyboa22l
• Steven Strogatz, Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos, 2000
• https://nwis.waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/uv?cb_00065=on&format=gif_stats&site_no=08166200&legacy=1&period=&begin_date=1996-11-30&end_date=2025-07-07