Strong fish such as the one who sent waters to the floods of Texas Hill Country’s summer camps are expected to become more common.
On Friday morning, some areas near the Guadalupe River received several months of rain in just a few hours. Six to 10 inches of rain fell in approximately three hours, according to Alan Gerard’s radar analysis, a meteorologist who wrote about the recent flood event. The region generally receives approximately 2.1 inches of rain, on average, in July and almost 31 inches for a year, according to NOAA data.
The effects of such extreme rains were exacerbated by the topography of the hill country. Some call the “Flash flood Alley” area, because the rain flows rapidly through its steep limestone hills and in suddenly overwhelmed rivers.
Scientists expect more intense rain events in the future as the use of human fossil fuels heats the atmosphere.
A warmer atmosphere can absorb, and deliver more water, which means that the probability of extreme precipitation is increasing. For each degree of heating in Fahrenheit, the atmosphere can contain approximately 3% -4% more moisture. Global temperatures in 2023 were approximately 2.32 degrees of higher degrees than the average of the twentieth century, according to national ocean and atmospheric administration data.
Intense rain events more likely as the world is heated, continues
In Texas, higher temperatures have already resulted in more intense rains. In a 2024 report, the Climatologist of the state of Texas, John Nielsen-Gammon, wrote that, on average, “the extreme precipitation of one day has increased by 5% to 15% since the last part of the 20th century” in the region. By 2036, Nielsen-Gammon wrote, he expected an additional increase of approximately 10% in rain intensity.
Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the Institute of Environment and Sustainability of the UCLA, said on the social networks X that this was “precisely” the type of rain event that scientists expect to be more common in a heater climate.
“It’s not about whether climate change played a role, it’s just a matter of how much,” Swain said.
