Floods In Kerrville

[GeeBee]

There has been terrible flash floods in Kerrville, TX, home of Mooney. There are at current count about 27 dead, including 9 children at a camp who were tragically swept away out of their bed in the middle of the night. We should all hope and pray our friends at the Mooney factory are safe and if anyone has a good connection reach out and let us know how they are doing. I hear the airport at Kerrville is the center for helicopter rescue.

 

https://www.nbcnews.com/video/drone-video-shows-deadly-flooding-in-kerrville-texas-242745413785

[DXB]

Terrible tragedy for the Kerrville community though the factory sounds intact.

[Paul Thomas]

Frank Crawford said the factory is fine.

[Schllc]

Brian K and his family had to evacuate.

@LANCECASPER is the closest I know of, hopefully everyone is ok. 

[Echo]

I read that they received 12 inches of rain in two hours. What a terrible thing very sad indeed.

[hammdo]

I heard on The news the rains dropped 3 trillion gallons - yes 3 trillion gallons in a matter of hours…

-Don

[exM20K]

1 hour ago, Schllc said:

Brian K and his family had to evacuate.

@LANCECASPER is the closest I know of, hopefully everyone is ok. 

…hoping it was merely a precautionary evacuation.

-dan

[exM20K]

46 minutes ago, hammdo said:

I heard on The news the rains dropped 3 trillion gallons - yes 3 trillion gallons in a matter of hours…

-Don

That’s approx 9.2 million acre/feet of water. All of Texas is something like 172 million acres, so given the widespread, long-duration, heavy rainfall, that sounds plausible.

[LANCECASPER]

12 hours ago, Schllc said:

Brian K and his family had to evacuate.

@LANCECASPER is the closest I know of, hopefully everyone is ok. 

I'm about 20 miles from Kerrville and we had a lot of rain where I live. A area of low pressure just parked over us for a day and dumped rain. I'm at an elevation of about 500 feet higher than Kerrville though so I didn't experience any problems at my house.

The heaviest rain was from around 12:00 AM to 10:00 AM on Friday - Kerrville got 12 inches of rain during that time. In some areas of the country that may not seem like enough to cause all of this flooding. In the Hill Country however we don't have a lot of topsoil so all of the rain runs off. Before the Guadalupe River crested in Kerrville they estimated that there were 175,000 cubit feet of water moving through every second. What made it so disastrous is that people from all over come here to camp along the river every 4th of July. The heaviest of the rain happened when they were sleeping. There were RVs and cars and trucks washed away. 

As of right now there are 43 official casualties and many missing. However, I fear the count will go much higher as the water lowers and bodies are found. An area NW of Kerrville in Hunt where there are summer camps got hit very hard. Pavement ripped off of the roads by the water. The Post office in that small town is completely gone, nothing left. Where Brian Kendrick and his family live in Kerrville is quite a ways up higher from the river, but it was a good precaution to leave I'm sure.

 

[Schllc]

Yes, it sounded more like getting around town and services are going to be severely impacted for everyone in Kerrville I’m sure. 

[exM20K]

estimated 4 day rainfall totals, and again with decreased opacity for context

 

Relief operations / how to help listed in this article for those so motivated:  https://gardenandgun.com/articles/catastrophic-flooding-in-central-texas-how-to-help/

[Schllc]

I read the river rose 30’ in 45 min. That’s incredible…

[Mcstealth]

This is not unprecedented. The flood of '32 was very bad I heard the stories of the old timers talk about it.. '78 wiped out Center Point, TX,  taking many lives and campers. '87 was another bad one, taking many  RV'ers lives and a school bus of 10 summer  campers fleeing the flood waters. 

Growing up, the river flooded all the time. It was normal to us. If the rain hits Kerrville, the river does not swell so much. If the headwaters of the Guadalupe are hit with heavy rains, as this was the case with all the major floods, seek high ground immediately. 

This one happened so fast and after midnight.

Flood warnings and evacuation warnings were every 15 minutes on my phone starting at 11pm. 

Knowing all this doesn't make it less sad. 

The airport is full of choppers and search planes. KERV is definitely serving it's part. 

Mooney factory has a dry creek that feeds the river but did not backfill enoughto reach inside the factory. I "think" that happend with the '78 flood. 

[GeeBee]

7 hours ago, Mcstealth said:

This is not unprecedented. The flood of '32 was very bad I heard the stories of the old timers talk about it.. '78 wiped out Center Point, TX,  taking many lives and campers. '87 was another bad one, taking many  RV'ers lives and a school bus of 10 summer  campers fleeing the flood waters. 

Growing up, the river flooded all the time. It was normal to us. If the rain hits Kerrville, the river does not swell so much. If the headwaters of the Guadalupe are hit with heavy rains, as this was the case with all the major floods, seek high ground immediately. 

This one happened so fast and after midnight.

Flood warnings and evacuation warnings were every 15 minutes on my phone starting at 11pm. 

Knowing all this doesn't make it less sad. 

The airport is full of choppers and search planes. KERV is definitely serving it's part. 

Mooney factory has a dry creek that feeds the river but did not backfill enoughto reach inside the factory. I "think" that happend with the '78 flood. 

Thanks for that update. Glad you are all safe. Your explanation is helpful. I often get aggravated by all the Amber alerts and weather alerts on my phone as I keep it on mine on my night stand for emergencies. They tell you not to do it for healthy sleep, but clearly in severe weather areas, it is a necessity.