Flash flood · Texas Hill Country, United States
Midnight on the Guadalupe
In the small hours of 4 July 2025, a holiday weekend, thunderstorms poured rain on the limestone hills where the forks of the Guadalupe River rise. Ten to twelve inches fell in a few hours on thin soils that shed water like a roof. The river near Camp Mystic, a girls' summer camp, rose by more than 7.6 metres in two hours, in the dark. More than 130 people died in central Texas, most of them in Kerr County.
4 July 2025 · Kerr County, Texas · ERA5
250–300mm
Rain over Kerr County
10 to 12 inches measured in a few hours; radar estimates reach 13 inches in places.N1
73mm
ERA5 at Kerrville, 4 Jul
The Lab's grid point on the river: about a quarter of what fell.
What happened
Moisture from the remains of Tropical Storm Barry, which had come ashore in Mexico days before, drifted north over Texas. On the night of 3 to 4 July a cluster of thunderstorms formed over the Hill Country and stayed there, new storms growing on the same spot as old ones moved off. The rain fell on the headwaters of the Guadalupe, steep valleys with little soil, and ran straight into the river.
Camps and homes along the banks were swept away before most people knew the river was rising. The flood wave then travelled down through Kerrville and on towards Comfort.
3–4 Jul, night
Thunderstorms form over the headwaters of the Guadalupe and keep re-forming over the same hills.
4 Jul, 01:14 local
The first flash flood warning for Kerr County.
4 Jul, before dawn
The Guadalupe rises more than 25 feet in two hours near Camp Mystic.N1
Tropical air over the hills
On the evening of 3 July a southerly low-level wind carried moist air from the Gulf and Mexico over central Texas. By midnight the air over the Hill Country held a great deal of convective energy, and the sounding over Kerrville shows it saturated through a deep layer.
The night's rain on the grid
1/4
ERA5's 73 mm at Kerrville on 4 July, against 250–300 mm measured in Kerr County. The storms that caused the flood were a few kilometres across; the 28 km grid averages them away.
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References
News
- N1NPR. Graphics: Where the Texas floods happened and how high the waters rose. 8 July 2025.Where the flood happened, how fast the river rose and the warnings issued.