Deadly Texas Hill Country Floods – July 4, 2025

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This has turned out to be Part I of an unknown series-number that I hope to keep short and finished soon.

Some of you who follow my blog may not have known just how closely my Alzheimer’s mom and I live to the banks of the Guadalupe River. Here’s a Google Maps view:

Click on image to enlarge

We live about 1,050–1,080 feet from the banks of the Guadalupe River. Here is how the river looked July 4th at approximately 3:00am to 4:30am CST and hours after:

Over 26-feet of water raised the Guadalupe River in less than 1-hour. The river crested at 30-feet above normal.

This was a very close call for us and our neighbors. However, having lived here in Kerrville, Texas, since 1996, Mom and I know full well how quickly this Hill Country can flood to dangerous, lethal levels. It has happened here many times going back to at least the early 1930’s. Anyone who has lived in Kerr County for a number of years, or decades, KNOWS what happened July 4-5, 2025, can occur in the spring/early-summer months when weather is quite volatile. And with extreme Climate Change weather events occurring around the globe more and more over the last 40-50 years, I am fully aware and many of our good dear friends in the area that are (very?) well-educated with good critical-thinking skills, consistent sound reasoning, and are not anti-science or hyper-religious know completely how vulnerable our area really is in which we live. Honestly, these weather events are NOT rocket science, but merely knowledge and education received during middle school called Earth Science classes.

However, those 4th- thru 8th-grade classes cover the core basics, but more than enough for a quality understanding of Earth’s climate and weather systems and how they work and are all linked together. Furthermore, a deeper understanding can easily be achieved if the person(s) want and desire to be very well-informed and more highly educated. In this area of Texas doing so is extremely wise! Your life could depend on it!

This is what is fully known by 7th- and 8th-generation Texans like myself and Mom, who are very well-educated with under-grad and post-grad educations and more importantly believe and trust science, particularly the Earth Sciences, Climate Change, meteorology, ecology, and atmospheric sciences and how they all interact. Again, in this area of Texas knowing these sciences thoroughly well could save your life.

Alright, enough of being a very highly educated 8th-generation Texan living in a volatile weather area of Texas. Let’s examine more broadly what took place prior to July 4-5 last autumn in October–November 2024 and thereafter, what occurred July 2-3 with the local National Weather Service, and now after the catastrophe and fatalities of over 47 people, many children… what is being said, claimed, blamed, and defended publicly by our Texas politicians and officials.

https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/texas-news/video-congressman-chip-roy-praises-central-texas-flood-response/3878753/

Congressman Chip Roy is our Republican representative in Texas’ 21st congressional district which includes Kerr County. Mr. Roy is originally from Bethesda, Maryland, not Texas. Mr. Roy has a long political history with Texas Senator John Cornyn (R), former Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) and by default former Texas Governor and U.S. President George W. Bush (R), and with current Senator Ted Cruz (R) and many other ultra-conservative MAGA-supporting politicians.

If you watched the above video of Rep. Chip Roy the day after the horrific tragedy along the Guadalupe in Hunt, Ingram, Kerrville, Center Point, and further down river to Comfort, Texas, this was one of the first things Mr. Roy stated on camera to America and the world:

“…there is going to be a lot of finger-pointing and blaming of what should’ve been done and what wasn’t done.”

This was stated less than 1-2 minutes in his opening remarks. Why start off the news briefing that way less-than 30-hours after the deadly tragedy? Couldn’t there have been several other positive remarks to be made first? It begs the question, was he speaking to families of victims, ordinary local Texans, or was he speaking to a world-wide and nation-wide audience and all their spotlights and cameras as if on stage? Was that really comforting to hurting families and Texans? Was it at all helpful?

Mr. Roy, Gov. Gregg Abbott, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha, Kerr County City Manager Dalton Rice and others sitting down, and all the other “attending officials” standing behind the sitting panel quickly began praising their political colleagues and authorities for their incredible efforts and response times, bragging and boasting about them doing their jobs with excellence.

I began to get sick to my stomach listening to these so-called political and public safety officials sitting and standing proudly in front of all the cameras and news media and asked, Why aren’t all of you out there helping clean-up, helping rescue efforts do more and doing it for hours upon hours upon more hours rather than bathing proudly in front of cameras? I had to walk out of the room. I couldn’t stomach their arrogance and egomania to the news media. 🤢🤮

The Before, During, and After Events & Facts

October–November 2024:
It is very well-known that in the early designs of our federal, state, county, and local governments, the process of legislation, voting, and representative-based system of officials serving the public—not their own interests—working with and protecting our citizenry, its public safety needs, its infrastructure required to keep citizens safe and protected, and that in a true and pure democracy us individual legal citizens must constantly participate in our government’s ruling and regulating this county, state, and nation at least every two-years. You must get up, get out and go vote for the best political-government officials. Citizens have the biannual responsibility to do their own homework and legwork to cast their vote for the most ideal, most experienced, most honorable and public-serving officials available. This honor, duty, and virtue can never be done right by taking the easy way out: like voting strictly party-line that takes 5-minutes at the polls, or spending 1-hour or less skimming over the candidate profiles, or worse still… by NOT voting at all!

Shamefully and sadly nearly 90-million Americans registered to vote did not go vote last October–November 2024 during one of this nation’s most critical elections to-date. Texas voters are some of the worst active voters in the nation, usually with only 34%–38% turnout rates every two years. And that has been the case in Texas since the 1970’s and 1980’s. The rural Texas areas, like Kerr County, are often lower turnout rates than 38%.

The consequences of this apathy and voting indifference by American voters last fall have directly and indirectly had domino-effects on many public safety, public programs, and not-for-profit organizations. Agencies nation-wide are now being felt personally by Americans as well as Texans in the Hill Country due to the apathy of voting citizens and the horrendous budget cuts and gutting of public safety agencies, staffing, and programs.

[ ** Note ** — I had to stop writing/drafting this post because we just began receiving more NWS Flash Flooding alerts and warnings on my cell phone and local newscasts again at around 2:30pm CST July 6th due to the North Fork of the Guadalupe River (near Hunt, TX) has another surge of water coming down to us in Kerrville, TX. Hopefully, I will return to this post shortly.]

I’m back. It is about 8:40am, July 7th. All afternoon yesterday and into the late evening after receiving two or three NWS Flash Flood alerts on my cell phone informing us and Kerrville residents close to the Guadalupe River to move to higher ground or evacuate your location if near the swollen river banks. The NWS alert told us that the North Fork of the Guadalupe was about to have a dangerous water surge northwest of and into Hunt, TX, see images below.

Upper Guadalupe River and North Fork
Guadalupe at Ingram, TX, Hwy 39 and Hwy 27 junction
Guadalupe River down river at Hwy 27/Junction Hwy and our home.

How large or how high the surge was going to be was not, at that moment, exactly known. The surge was expected to hit Hunt, TX, at their Guadalupe River point near downtown in 20-mins or so. That is approximately 15-18 minutes up river from us/our home. Not yet knowing how high/large the water surge would be I immediately began making preparations for my 85-year old Alzheimer’s mom and I to either quickly evacuate the property complex, or if we could not exit out onto Junction Hwy/Hwy 27—there’s only one entrance/exit for our property—so I then made preparations for a Plan B… climbing up the closest, strongest oak tree in front of our porch getting up at least 6-7 feet higher than our sidewalk and front porch. Mom was going to be the very difficult rescue; she has no physical strength at her age. Given the very short period of time I had this was the best I could do in 15-minutes.

About 35-45 minutes later I found out from local TV news and weather updates what the expected surge-height would be: no more than 11-feet. That was great news! During the night/early hours of July 4th the surge was 23-26 feet, cresting at 30-feet. I had roughly calculated that if this second surge would be upwards of 45-feet or more… we were probably in big trouble. As luck would have it, we were still safe.

I will pause here for the moment given the unexpected length of this blog-post and the volatility we’ve had over the last three/four days and nights. I will try my best to post Part II very soon…

A late update and clarification – July 7, 1:25pm CST:

Regarding stalled thunderstorm vortexes in Texas, these have been rare. The commonly used term over the last several decades is a “100-year Storm.” However, these events are becoming more and more common place and frequent. They have become what is currently classified as Mesoscale Convective Vortex or stalled low-pressure thunderstorm system(s).

Important Considerations of a MCV:

Mesoscale Convective Vortex (MCV): A low-pressure center within a Mesoscale Convective System (MCS) that can pull winds into a circling pattern. MCVs can persist for hours after the MCS dissipates and can even become the nucleus for a tropical storm.

Stalled Storms: Stalled storm systems can cause significant flooding due to repeated heavy rainfall over the same areas. An example is the extraordinary rainfall in Texas in July 2025.

Defining “Stalled Thunderstorm Vortex”: It’s possible that the concept of a “stalled thunderstorm vortex” refers to a longer-lasting mesovortex within a thunderstorm complex, leading to PROLONGED severe weather conditions in a particular area over several hours.

Live Well – Love Much – Laugh Often – Learn Always

The Professor’s Convatorium © 2023 by Professor Taboo is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 

31 thoughts on “Deadly Texas Hill Country Floods – July 4, 2025”

  1. Prof, stay safe! Do you have a bug out bag by the door or have arranged to have your Mom transported to higher ground?

    And re “I am fully aware and many of our good dear friends in the area that are (very?) well-educated with good critical-thinking skills, consistent sound reasoning, and are not anti-science or hyper religious know completely how vulnerable an area we live in.”

    I do not disbelieve this but I have read (reliable?) that local voters voted down a proposal to have a local weather service for just this reason. If that is true is it because of voter apathy that the voters who did show up were of the “no new taxes” crowd? Such systems have been implement in other areas of the country with frequent weather dangers and have worked fairly well.

    Whatever the case, please prepare for worse as there doesn’t seem to be in place a warning system that will provide you time to flee.

    Liked by 1 person

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    • Hey Steve,

      Thanks. We may be out of the dark now reviewing our weather news of late. It was a very good thing that the new weather phenomena of a stalled, churning rain vortex that happened in the wee hours of July 4th, did not happen as severely and for over 12-hours on July 6th. Otherwise, we’d be in the exact same predicament again.

      Yes, “local voters” here are INDEED very apathetic, very uneducated, and those specific voters if not Republican, seemingly don’t see any point in wasting 1-2 hours of their voting day(s) when they perceive their vote as worthless here in hardcore Trump-supporting Kerr County. Most of those inactive, indifferent Kerr County voters are from a specific demographic and much more moderate (lazy?) political persuasion, if that all makes sense.

      As far as the public safety issues and weather warning systems you allude to… you are spot-on correct Steve! But as you know full well, here in rural parts of Texas, only about 1/3rd of the Caucasian population consistently votes every 4- or 2-years and you know who they are and their political party.

      “Preparing for the worst, hoping for the best” is exactly what I’ve been doing since July 3rd and 4th.

      Thank you Steve! 😍

      Liked by 1 person

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  2. Pingback: Deadly Texas Hill Country Floods – July 4, 2025 | The Professor’s Convatorium | Ned Hamson's Second Line View of the News

  3. I read about the flood yesterday while on a delivery run. I was going to give you a shout out yesterday but we got super busy. I also reasoned… It’s only an Arsenal supporter so. you understand, right?
    However, you being a bit quiet of late was making me nervous so when the post popped up I breathed a sigh of relief that you and yours are okay.

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    • 😆

      Hey Ark. Yeah, as you might imagine I’ve been one very busy boy the last 3.5 days/nights. As I was telling Steve above, it looks as if we are coming out of the dark for the next few days, maybe longer, as we now prepare for August and triple-digits temps. Hence, extreme heat warnings, etc.

      Mom and I are fine all things considered. My fiancé, Sandy, arrives July 19 staying until August 30 during which time we will definitely marry at our county Justice of the Peace. Can’t wait for that to happen! 😁😍

      Nevertheless, this Arsenal Gunner fan is still here to harass you longer! 🤭😈

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      • Wow! Did not know about the “pending marriage”! I remembered you had a new person in your life, but wasn’t aware that it was serious. Congrats! I’m very happy that you have found someone special. ❤

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        • Yes, thank you Nan! We’ve been great close friends for over 45-years, but only recently were both free to reconnect seriously. And now this! ☺️ We cannot stop laughing together. Sometimes my cheeks and jaw hurt so much from the non-stop laughing together. 😉

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    • Thank you so much Nan! ❤️ It has been pretty harry and totally unpredictable (to a degree), and honestly, NOT because of these new, rare extreme weather phenomena. That I expect. However, the other major problems as Steve alluded to above… THAT I did expect given where we live here in Kerr County. 🙄😣

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  5. Yikes, Dwain! This is astonishing. The map that shows how close you are is quite chilling. Thank goodness you didn’t have to hoist your mom up the tree!

    So glad you’re both all right–and that your fiancee is scheduled to arrive for a summer wedding. That’s wonderful news!

    Liked by 1 person

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    • Thanks Shell. We are doing the best all things considered. It was a very rough 2-day/nights here. Ugh. Hopefully these next set of thunderstorms moving in/thru tomorrow July 9th won’t be as horrible. 🤞

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  9. Thank you PT for making the time and having the focus to keep those of us outside of the event updated in the physical situation and from a personal viewpoint.

    “…there is going to be a lot of finger-pointing and blaming of what should’ve been done and what wasn’t done.”

    Definitely the reaction of someone who has a troubled mind but won’t admit to it.

    You are obviously fully alert to the problems and the conditions which could and do arise in your area.Now this is what being ‘Woke’ is all about.I will be thinking of you and yours.

    Roger

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  10. Pingback: Deadly Texas Hill Country Floods – Part II | The Professor's Convatorium

  11. I wandered over here from Ms. Dennison place and I figgered I’d add my $0.02.

    The owner of Camp Mystic had (he perished in the flood) been ringing the alarm bell on the Guadalupe fer 38 years, but Republican reactionaries — by definition — don’t foresee trouble, they put band-aids on after-the-fact. They are incapable of anything else. I learned a new phrase recently — quit expecting yer dog to do yer math homework — it seems apropos, here.

    In 2021, Biden granted Kerr co. $10.2 million under the American Rescue Plan Act, but Idunno where that sweet sweet bank got off to . . . .

    I’ll nit-pick a wee bit on this . . .

    Shamefully and sadly nearly 90-million Americans registered to vote did not go vote last October–November 2024

    . . . with stats using the VEP (voting-eligible population). Last year’s stats weren’t so bad in the historical context of post Depression/post WWII at just under 64%. Only the 2020 election was higher — and that’s dating back to the year 1900. The damage wuz dun in the 60s, 70, and 80s.

    Heritage’s co-founder Paul Weyrich spelled it all out in his 1980 speech ranting about goo goo Republicans. He succinctly pointed out that conservatives win elections when fewer people vote.

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      • Thanks for the invitation. I reckon my comment went into immediate moderation and needed yer clearance, it bein’ my first post. It’s the same thing at Bro’s place which is where I usually hang out.

        https://mindofbrosephus.wordpress.com/

        As an aside, The Paxton divorce proceedings are now sealed. He musta been gettin’ his freak on, as merely plonking a side piece really isn’t that big of a dealio.

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        • 😆 That is precisely what I suspected, but didn’t bother to checkout deeper… cuz his life is extremely UNimportant to me. But if that was the reason she divorced him, then that was only the very minimal reason to do so. 🤭 Needless to say, it wasn’t any surprise whatsoever. Hell, I don’t know why on Earth Melania Trump doesn’t divorce HER husband. He obviously has some type of prenuptial contract over her head to where she’d be arrested by ICE too! 😄🙄

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          • Well, my gurl MTG has got Paxton beat by a kountry mile. She was getting her freak on with her physical trainer AND her tantric sex guru. Few people outside of Ga. know she’s from Milledgeville Ga. which is where we used house our criminally insane. But even she don’t hold a candle to one of her predecessors, Neal “When You Grow Up On A Farm in Georgia, Your First Girlfriend Is A Mule” Horsley who was from her district in NW Ga.

            And, oh dear … it appears I fell into a nest of Goonahs.
            Blue Is The Colour! Big match tomorrow against PSG who CFC has fallen to multiple times in the UCL.

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