Buresh Blog: Texas catastrophic flooding... Hottest time of the year... U.S. tornadoes

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Updated every day throughout the hurricane season - “Talking the Tropics With Mike”.

The world is watching & mourning as Texas reels from catastrophic flooding over the July 4th weekend. As of Tue., July 8th, the death toll is 109 & will undoubtedly go higher as dozens are missing. To put this in some perspective, there have been 765 flooding deaths in the U.S. since 1980. So the Texas death toll from a single flash flood event is a staggering 14%(+) of all the deaths attributed to flooding in the United States since 1980.

There is a lot to dissect about how & why this tragedy formed & unfolded & why so many lives were lost. Some very important points to begin with:

• the Texas Hill country is a known to be prone to flash flooding & has a history of such
• there were some cloud seeding operations more than 24 hours prior - by Rainmaker Technology. But cloud seeding only seeds existing clouds & studies indicate the peak estimated increase in rainfall is only near 20 percent IF successful. This was a *natural* disaster.
• this was no one’s “fault” - politically or otherwise
• the flash flood was *not* manufactured by, created by or or manipulated in any way by humans or human technology.
• The National Weather Service offices in Texas - San Antonio & San Angelo specifically - did a good job issuing watches, warnings & advisories with adequate staff available & working during the flash flooding.

Camp Mystic has grabbed many of the headlines as 20+ children, counselors & the owner lost their lives along the violently rising Guadalupe River. The river rose an astonishing 26 feet in less than 5 hours!

Some folks (meteorologists & not) have blamed former tropical storm “Barry” for the Texas deluge. So I looked back at the weather charts. What was a very weak Barry came ashore June 30th on the east central coast of Mexico. There is no recognizable spin (low pressure) at the surface shortly after landfall nor is there any upper level spin (vorticity) visible from the remnants of what would have been Barry. There was a strong push of tropical moisture northward from Mexico but that was amidst an already nearly saturated air mass that was engulfing much of Texas due to broad southerly flow out of Mexico & off the Gulf. So personally I don’t believe Barry was the true cause & the death toll should not be attributed to Barry. But given the scope of the disaster, it’s just semantics & the National Hurricane Center will most likely make the final call.

So it appears it was small scale weather features (mesoscale) that came together at the wrong time in the wrong place to cause the disaster. During the middle of the night July 3/4, a complex of heavy thunderstorms developed over Central Texas eventually forming its own atmosphere, of sorts - a mesoscale convective system (MCS). The system managed to develop an upper level disturbance with a cyclonic (low pressure/counterclockwise) circulation. This helped to “lift” the warm, tropical air mass even more & sustained slow moving thunderstorms over the same area for hours with rainfall rates of 3-5 inches per hour! Also included in the recipe:

• early morning - well before sunrise, so it was dark.
• long holiday weekend so campgrounds were full
• hilly terrain with topographical input helping to cause very fast currents

Radar imagery from July 3-4 centered on Texas:

Infrared satellite imagery:

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“If Mother Nature cannot be commanded, She should be obeyed”.

Moving on to local weather ... Jacksonville is now in the true “Dog Days” of summer. Our avg. high temp. at 92 degrees is the hottest of the year & continues to be the avg. into early Aug. Our avg. high temp. does not fall below 90 degrees until near the end of Aug. Stay cool & drink lots of water!

I came across this very interesting map - from ‘PAwx’ on ‘X’ of the strongest tornadoes ever recorded in each county in the U.S.. For instance - the strongest in Duval Co. is an EF-2... in St. Johns Co. - an EF-3: