Texas, in a few hours a third of a year's worth of rain. At least 109 dead
Rights — di Andrea Barolini
Torrential rains struck Texas on Friday, causing the Guadalupe River to rise suddenly and violently, leaving a trail of death in its wake.
Texas, in a few hours a third of a year's worth of rain. At least 109 dead
Torrential rains struck Texas on Friday, causing the Guadalupe River to rise suddenly and violently, leaving a trail of death in its wake.
An extreme weather event has caused a massacre in Texas. On Friday, torrential rains lashed the central portion of the American state, triggering a sudden and violent flood. In a single day, the sky unleashed a third of the rainfall normally expected over an entire year. The waters of the Guadalupe River – a waterway that rises in Kerr County and flows into the Gulf of Mexico – rose accordingly in a sudden and terrifying surge: eight metres in just 45 minutes.
Ten girls who were at a summer camp in Texas are still missing
The fury of the flood swept away everything in its path: trees, houses, cars. The human toll is devastating and still provisional: the death count now exceeds 100, including dozens of minors. The wall of mud also engulfed a summer camp where 750 children were staying. Ten of them, according to local authorities, are still missing. In total, more than 160 people have yet to be accounted for.
The death toll from catastrophic floods in Texas reached at least 78, including 28 children, as the search for girls missing from a summer camp continued and fears of more flooding prompted evacuations of volunteer responders reut.rs/3GtJjLH
500 rescue workers were deployed to the scene, supported by fourteen helicopters and numerous drones. They were joined by dozens of local residents who are voluntarily taking part in the search. So much time has now passed, however, that it would take a miracle. "We are finding bodies everywhere", authorities in the city of Kerrville stated.
Controversy over the cuts to meteorological services ordered by Donald Trump
By Sunday, the floodwaters had largely receded, giving way to a landscape of devastation. The area around the summer camp appears to be among the worst affected: mud is everywhere, windows and doors have been ripped from their frames.
On the evening of 4 July, the local National Weather Service office covering Kerr County had five agents on duty – the number normally scheduled during unsettled weather conditions. Officials issued an initial alert and then, at 1:14 in the morning, a flash flood warning (describing an "potentially catastrophic" sudden flood). In practice, this triggers an immediate text message alert to mobile phones in the area. At that hour, however, many people were asleep, and above all the children at the summer camp had no phones. The alarm, in short, did not spread quickly enough.
President Donald Trump declared a state of disaster and stated that he intends to visit the affected areas in the coming days. The head of state then found himself having to defend his administration against the first wave of controversy surrounding the catastrophe: some have pointed the finger at the cuts to meteorological services imposed by the Washington administration. Numerous residents of the affected areas have in fact stated that they were not warned in time about the flood risk.
The weight of climate change on extreme weather events
It is difficult to state with certainty that there may be a link between the layoffs and funding cuts to meteorological agencies and what happened in Texas. What can be highlighted, however, are two issues, both tied to climate change driven by global warming. The first concerns the fact that, for many years now, the scientific community has been warning that one of the consequences of rising average global temperatures is precisely the multiplication of extreme weather events, which are becoming and will continue to become ever more frequent and severe.
To be certain that even a single event was caused by (or exacerbated by) climate warming, studies are required. A new branch of climatology and meteorology, Attribution Science, is dedicated precisely to this. But even while awaiting a precise assessment of what happened in Texas, it is clear that we will increasingly face situations of this kind in the future.
Weather forecasting made more complex by global warming
The second issue is linked to the growing difficulties that meteorologists face in producing precise and accurate forecasts. The mathematical models on which they rely are increasingly difficult to interpret, as events unfold more rapidly than in the past: "The window for obtaining accurate forecasts shrinks by several hours for every degree centigrade of global warming", explained a Stanford University study published in 2021. Adapting to climate change also requires new investment in meteorology – exactly the opposite of what Trump has decided to do in the United States.