{"id":44408,"date":"2025-07-06T01:46:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-06T06:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=44408"},"modified":"2025-07-06T04:08:37","modified_gmt":"2025-07-06T09:08:37","slug":"this-came-at-night-texas-officials-say-they-were-caught-off-guard-by-deadly-rainstorms-flooding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=44408","title":{"rendered":"‘This came at night’: Texas officials say they were caught off guard by deadly rainstorms, flooding"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The deadly floods that struck Texas<\/a> on the 4th of July caught local officials off guard as the torrential rains caused the Guadalupe River to rise to near-historic levels in a matter of minutes, officials said at a press conference Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At least 32 people died after heavy rain pounded Kerr County, Texas, early Friday, leading to “catastrophic” flooding, according to officials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Flood Watch was in effect for parts of New Mexico and western Texas Thursday afternoon as rounds of slow-moving thunderstorms packing heavy rain moved through the area. By Thursday evening, five inches of rain had fallen in parts of western Texas, including Midland and Odessa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning for Kerr County, where the river is located, around 1:14 a.m. Friday.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Guadalupe River rose 26 feet in 45 minutes that morning, Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring told reporters Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“This came at night, when people were asleep in bed,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The river reached its second-highest height on record, surpassing a 1987 flood level, the National Weather Service said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick told reporters that it is up to local mayors and counties to evacuate if they feel the need and many were unsure where the storm would land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At a news conference Friday, Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said the county does not have a warning system on the river.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kelly was pressed by a reporter as to why evacuations didn’t take place Thursday, but the judge said, “We didn’t know this flood was coming.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“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,” he said.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rain continued to hit the region Saturday, prompting flash flood emergency warnings for much of Burnet County and western parts of Williamson County and Travis County.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

abcnews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The deadly floods that struck Texas on the 4th of July caught local officials off guard as the torrential rains caused the Guadalupe River to rise to near-historic levels in a matter of minutes, officials said at a press conference Saturday. At least 32 people died after heavy rain pounded Kerr County, Texas, early Friday, leading to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":44409,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1154],"tags":[6150,1558,1298],"class_list":["post-44408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-caught","tag-officials","tag-texas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44408"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44410,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44408\/revisions\/44410"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/44409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}