How will Tropical Storm Chantal impact New Jersey?
Highs will reach near 90 in most areas on Sunday, and humidity is expected to noticeably rise by the afternoon, according to the National Weather Service. Scattered showers and storms on Monday and Tuesday will bring the potential for 'torrential downpours, localized flooding and gusty winds."
"It's going to be warmer [Sunday] than it has been in the past couple of days," said National Weather Service meteorologist Matthew Wunsch. "So as we get into tomorrow, it will start to get a little more unsettled. It will get progressively cloudier. High temps will still be pretty warm, with forecasts in the upper 80s to lower 90s."
Moisture will rise and it will "make it feel significantly muggy outside" early in the week, Wunsch added.
"We have a frontal system that will make its approach tomorrow with also remnants of what is right now Tropical Storm Chantal. The moisture from that system will progressively make its way up there," Wunsch said.
The National Weather Service is not anticipating widespread flooding, Wunsch added, but storms could produce locally heavy rainfall with a potential for localized flooding. Showers are likely to begin by Monday afternoon.
Tropical Storm Chantal, the third tropical storm of the 2025 Atlantic season, made landfall near Litchfield Beach, South Carolina, at around 4 a.m. on Sunday, July 6, USA TODAY reported.
The storm began to weaken as it barreled inland across South Carolina, though the storm still brought a threat of flash flooding, possible tornadoes and dangerous rip current conditions. Forecasters said the storm, which has seen its winds decrease steadily through the morning, could weaken to a tropical depression later on July 6.
While the storm is expected to continue weakening, it was still likely "to produce heavy rainfall across portions of northeastern South Carolina today and across portions of North Carolina through Monday," the National Hurricane Center said.
Total rainfall of 2 to 4 inches, and local amounts up to 6 inches, were expected. "The combination of storm surge and tide will cause normally dry areas near the coast to be flooded by rising waters moving inland from the shoreline," the center warned.
Meanwhile, from the Carolinas to the Florida coast, Chantal was expected to produce "life-threatening surf and rip currents" into next week, the hurricane center said.
USA TODAY contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: How will Tropical Storm Chantal impact New Jersey?
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Washington Post
34 minutes ago
- Washington Post
Texas Hill Country is no stranger to flash floods. Why were so many caught off guard?
The deluge that killed nearly 80 people along fast-surging Texas rivers early Friday struck a region that has grappled with deadly floods before. And yet, the magnitude of the disaster exposed gaps in its ability to warn people, including a delayed flood risk alert from Kerr County and stalled development of a flood monitoring system. This swath of Central Texas is the most flash-flood prone region in the country, and officials know the Hill Country's terrain can turn slow, shallow rivers into walls of water. But even as weather forecasts began to hint at the potential for heavy rain on Thursday, the response exposed a disconnect: Few, including local authorities, prepared for anything but their normal Fourth of July. When the precipitation intensified in the early morning hours Friday, many people failed to receive or respond to flood warnings at riverside campsites and cabins that were known to be in the floodplain. A review of wireless emergency and data from a public database that pulls in Federal Emergency Management Agency's Integrated Public Alert & Warning System shows that the county did not send its first Amber Alert-style push until Sunday. Days after the state had launched a full-scale rescue effort, continued rains appeared to prompt an alert sent to much of Kerr County urging people to 'move to higher ground' because of 'high confidence of river flooding.' The county has sent such alerts in past emergencies. Up until then, most cellphone alerts were coming from the National Weather Service's Austin/San Antonio station. But some alerts about life-threatening flooding didn't come until the predawn hours, and to areas where cellular reception may have been spotty. The disaster has prompted renewed emphasis on a years-long push for a comprehensive flood monitoring system in Kerr County. And it has raised questions about whether anything could be enough to prepare and protect communities in places like this, where cellphone-based alerts can be unreliable, emergency managers have limited resources and the potential for disaster is high. 'That's the part that hurts,' said Rosalie Castro of Kerrville, Texas. 'We had no warning.' For hours on Friday, the 60-year-old waited for word from her nephew who lived in a trailer home park near the Guadalupe River. The first alert Castro received on her phone came around 7:58 a.m., but her nephew was caught off guard. 'If it wasn't for his dogs barking, he wouldn't have awakened on time,' Castro said. He survived. But his neighbor, Julian Ryan, cut an artery while rushing to save his family. Melinda Cortez had never been to Kerrville before. She, her family, and some good friends rented a few cabins at the HTR campground along the Guadalupe River for the big Fourth of July river festival. After dinner at Howdy's, they sat on the porch, talking and laughing until around midnight. It was lightly raining. At 4:45 a.m., she awoke to another camper banging on the cabin door, yelling to get out, now. Water was everywhere. A minute later, the camp sent a text to guests that 'we have just received notice from the fire department that we need to evacuate the park due to flooding,' according to a message reviewed by The Washington Post. Water from the river, which had been about a football field away from her cabin steps, was up to the porch. A Ford F-150 truck and trailer floated by. Glancing at her phone, she noticed two new alerts: one was a flash-flood warning, the other was from the campground, sent five minutes before the man pounded on their cabin, telling them to evacuate. By then, the water was up to their waist. Cortez, like many people who were in town or visiting that weekend, didn't know the area could flood. There are more than a dozen camps in the Guadalupe River region — and many are adjacent or are partially inside high-risk flood zones, according to maps from FEMA . But Cortez lives in Austin, a few hours away, and didn't know about the risk, or its history. While enjoying the river that day, she had not seen warnings, and 'the camp didn't say anything,' she said. 'I never thought that whole area could flood,' she said. For emergencies and disasters, leaders often use a patchwork of alerts and warnings to try to get to different populations. The National Weather Service, which had been warning about the coming rains and potential for flash floods for days, has stations across the state. Its Austin/San Antonio office sent alerts on social media as well as using wireless emergency alerts, which use cellphone towers to target people in a specific area. Local authorities, including the police, office often post updates to their Facebook pages and websites. Kerrville and the county use a web-based notification system called CodeRED, which people have to sign up for. The holes in this warning system are not new, and highlight the challenge of urgently communicating weather risks as a warming climate drives more atmospheric moisture, which can come down in sudden bursts. And in remote areas, with fewer resources for emergency management operations, the breakdown can be even worse. Kerrville police, the Kerr County sheriff and other official pages did not mention looming weather and its risks on their social media profiles, posting on July 3 about the upcoming Fourth of July river festival. Officials from those agencies, county government and the county judge did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a Friday news conference day, Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said he couldn't say why areas including Camp Mystic, where dozens of people died or were still missing, weren't evacuated — they hadn't seen this disaster coming. 'Rest assured, no one knew this kind of flood was coming,' Kelly said. 'We have floods all the time. This is the most dangerous river valley in the United States and we deal with floods on a regular basis. When it rains, we get water. We had no reason to believe that this was going to be anything like what's happened here. None whatsoever.' Meteorologists in this region of Texas are acutely aware of the most flood-prone areas in a region that has been known as 'flash flood alley' for decades, said Steven Lyons, who retired four years ago after a decade as the meteorologist-in-charge of the National Weather Service's San Angelo office. When preparing to issue flash-flood warnings in the midst of the storm, lists of dozens of areas in jeopardy would pop up automatically. It's up to the meteorologists to decide which to send, or deselect. Central Texas, specifically Kerr County and the surrounding areas, is made of undulating hills and steep canyons filled with thin, drought-stricken soil and slick limestone. Normally, the rivers and streams run clear, tranquil, and shallow. But when it rains, that topography 'causes the river to roar,' the Upper Guadalupe River Authority explained in a 2017 video warning people of flood risks. The silky, shallow limestone river beds turn the meandering water into massive walls of concrete that hurl downstream in a matter of minutes. While much of the region is rural and remote, there is a heavy concentration of old mobile home parks — many filled with vulnerable residents — along and near the river. Kerrville has been growing steadily, according to an overview of city and county meeting minutes, and new residents may not have the lived experience of how quickly heavy rains can spark a flash flood. Ahead of these floods, the Weather Service office near San Antonio, which oversees warnings issued in Kerr County, had one key vacancy: A warning coordination meteorologist, who is responsible for working with emergency managers and the public to ensure people know what to do when a disaster strikes. The person who served in that role for decades was among hundreds of Weather Service employees who accepted early retirement offers and left the agency at the end of April, local media reported. Lyons said that departure would have had a limited impact on Friday's emergency, however, because this staffer's key work takes place weeks and months ahead of a disaster, ensuring training and communication channels are in place. Pat Vesper, meteorologist-in-charge of the Weather Service's San Antonio/Austin office, declined to answer questions about the vacancy, flood warnings or communications with Kerr County officials. He referred questions to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officials, who did not immediately respond to questions. The tragedy in Hill Country was already reigniting debate among meteorologists and social scientists that goes back decades, about how to craft and disseminate warnings in a way that saves lives. 'The real trick is, how do you get people to get the message quickly, a message they can understand easily, and have them take action that will save their lives?' Lyons said. 'People think, 'It can't be that bad; I'll just jump up on my roof,'' Lyons said. 'Well, not if your house is floating away.' The fact that the worst of the flooding hit in the middle of the night only exacerbated the challenge. 'If people had gotten the message before they had gone to sleep, would they have gotten out of there? Maybe,' Lyons said. 'The messaging is critical but so are the actions that people take based on the messaging. We can't tell you how many raindrops are going to fall out of a thunderstorm.' Past floods have spurred the same discussions about how to protect people around Hill Country. About a decade ago, Kerrville leaders began working on a flood warning system, after a river rose to about 45 feet and nearly swallowed the nearby Texas town of Wimberley over Memorial Day Weekend 2015, said Tom Moser, a Kerr County commissioner at the time. County officials assessed an upgrade to a warning system that would have included sirens. But some balked at the cost, with one commissioner calling it 'a little extravagant for Kerr County, with sirens and such.' Then next year, they submitted a grant request for $980,000 to FEMA for the initiatives, county documents show. But they didn't get the money, and 'most of the funds went to communities impacted by Hurricane Harvey,' according to the county's Hazard Mitigation Action Plan. In an interview, Moser said the community took some steps to reduce flood dangers, installing flood gauges and barriers at low river crossings, spots where rural roads pass through what is normally a trickling stream. They also trained emergency management staff and other authorities on what to do in the event of a flood. But despite attempts to fund a larger flood warning system project in the county budget, Moser said, 'It never got across the goal line.' Moser said. The efforts stalled by the time he retired in 2021. But the Upper Guadalupe River Authority, which partners with the county, made some progress this past year. They signed an agreement with a consulting firm to assess the county's needs, aiming to develop a monitoring and warning system depending on 'what we can afford,' said director Diane L. McMahon. The investment comes as the deaths in Texas are likely to galvanize a push for similar flood warning systems across the states and the country, Moser said. 'I think there will be a lot of attention paid to it now,' Moser said, adding that he doesn't know if any warning system will be able to protect everyone. But 'it could be a lot better than what we currently have.' Watching the death toll rise, Nicole Wilson wondered what might have happened if campers along the river had the kind of warnings she had growing up in tornado-prone Kentucky: loud, blaring sirens. After rushing to pick up her two daughters from another Central Texas camp, Wilson thought how just minutes could be life changing. She started a petition on Saturday, calling on officials to 'implement a modern outdoor early warning siren system.' 'Sometimes we only had five minutes,' she recalled of her childhood tornado warnings. 'Maybe those girls in the lower cabins would have come outside and seen the water,' she said. 'Maybe they could have grabbed others and ran uphill.' Eva Ruth Moravec and John Muyskens contributed to this report.
Boston Globe
39 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
As floods hit, key roles were vacant at weather service offices in Texas
Advertisement The shortages are among the factors likely to be scrutinized as the death toll climbs from the floods. Separate questions have emerged about the preparedness of local communities, including Kerr County's apparent lack of a local flood warning system. The county, about 50 miles northwest of San Antonio, is where many of the deaths occurred. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up In an interview, Rob Kelly, the Kerr County judge and its most senior elected official, said the county did not have a warning system because such systems are expensive, and local residents are resistant to new spending. 'Taxpayers won't pay for it,' Kelly said. Asked if people might reconsider in light of the catastrophe, he said, 'I don't know.' The weather service's San Angelo office, which is responsible for some of the areas hit hardest by Friday's flooding, was missing a senior hydrologist, staff forecaster, and meteorologist in charge, according to Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the National Weather Service Employees Organization, the union that represents weather service workers. Advertisement The weather service's nearby San Antonio office, which covers other areas hit by the floods, also had significant vacancies, including a warning coordination meteorologist and science officer, Fahy said. Staff members in those positions are meant to work with local emergency managers to plan for floods, including when and how to warn local residents and help them evacuate. That office's warning coordination meteorologist left April 30, after taking the early retirement package the Trump administration used to reduce the number of federal employees, according to a person with knowledge of his departure. Some of the openings may predate the current Trump administration. But at both offices, the vacancy rate is roughly double what it was when Trump returned to the White House in January, according to Fahy. John Sokich, who until January was director of congressional affairs for the weather service, said those unfilled positions made it harder to coordinate with local officials because each weather service office works as a team. 'Reduced staffing puts that in jeopardy,' he said. A spokesperson for the weather service, Erica Grow Cei, did not answer questions from The New York Times about the Texas vacancies, including how long those positions had been open and whether those vacancies had contributed to the damage caused by the flooding. 'The National Weather Service is heartbroken by the tragic loss of life,' she said in a statement, adding that the agency 'remains committed to our mission to serve the American public through our forecasts and decision support services.' Advertisement A White House spokesperson directed a request for comment to the Commerce Department, which includes the weather service. A Commerce spokesperson said there have been no funding cuts to the weather service and added: 'The timely and accurate forecasts and alerts for Texas this weekend prove that the NWS remains fully capable of carrying out its critical mission.' The tragedy began to unfold in the early hours of Friday, when more than 10 inches of rain fell in some areas northwest of San Antonio, including in Kerr County, where more than 850 people were evacuated by rescuers. Several campers and a counselor from Camp Mystic, a girls' summer camp in Kerr County, remained missing Sunday, according to Larry Leitha, the county sheriff. On Saturday night, Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, appeared to fault the weather service, noting that forecasters Wednesday had predicted as much as 6 to 8 inches of rain in the region. 'The amount of rain that fell in this specific location was never in any of those forecasts,' he said at a news conference with Governor Greg Abbott. But what makes flash floods so hazardous is their ability to strike quickly, with limited warning. Around midnight Thursday, the San Angelo and San Antonio weather offices put out their first flash flood warnings, urging people to 'move immediately to higher ground.' The office sent out additional flash flood warnings through the night, expanding the area of danger. It is not clear what steps local officials took to act on those warnings. A spokesperson for the Kerr County emergency management department did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Advertisement The amount of rain that fell Friday morning was hard for the weather service to anticipate, with reports in some areas of 15 inches over just a few hours, according to Louis W. Uccellini, who was director of the weather service from 2013 until 2022. 'It's pretty hard to forecast for these kinds of rainfall rates,' Uccellini said. He said that climate change was making extreme rainfall events more frequent and severe, and that more research was needed so that the weather service could better forecast those events. An equally important question, he added, was how the weather service was coordinating with local emergency managers to act on those warnings as they came in. 'You have to have a response mechanism that involves local officials,' Uccellini said. 'It involves a relationship with the emergency management community, at every level.' But that requires having staff members in those positions, he said. Under the Trump administration, the weather service, like other federal agencies, has been pushed to reduce its number of employees. By this spring, through layoffs and retirements, the weather service had lost nearly 600 people from a workforce that until recently was as large as 4,000. This article originally appeared in
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Texas lawmakers failed to pass a bill to improve local flood warning systems this year
For the last three days, state Rep. Wes Virdell has been out with first responders in Kerr County as they searched for victims and survivors from the devastating floods that swept through Central Texas early Friday morning. 'All the focus right now is let's save all the lives we can,' Virdell, who was still on the scene in Kerrville, told The Texas Tribune on Sunday. Virdell's closeup view of the havoc wreaked on his district has made a lasting impression, he said, and left him reconsidering a vote he made just a few months ago against a bill that would have established a grant program for counties like Kerr to improve the warning systems they use to notify residents of life-threatening disasters. 'I can tell you in hindsight, watching what it takes to deal with a disaster like this, my vote would probably be different now,' the freshman GOP lawmaker said. The measure, House Bill 13, also would have created a new government body to craft a statewide plan for using emergency equipment. It died in the Texas Senate, prompting newfound questions about whether lawmakers should have done more to help rural, cash-strapped counties stave off the deadly effects of future natural disasters. As of Sunday evening, at least 79 people had died in the floods. Of those, 68 were in Kerr County, many of them camping or attending a private summer camp along the Guadalupe River. Virdell, a Hill Country native who lives in Brady, about 100 miles away, made his way to Kerrville early Friday after seeing news that rains raised the Guadalupe more than two feet, swamping its banks in Hunt and other river communities that host thousands of holiday vacationers. He stressed an alarm system, such as sirens used in tornado-prone Texas counties, may not have helped much in this instance because the floodwaters came so quickly. Between 2 and 7 a.m., the Guadalupe River in Kerrville rose from 1 to more than 34 feet in height, according to a flood gauge in the area. 'I don't think there was enough evidence to even suspect something like this was going to happen,' he said. 'I think even if you had a warning system there, this came in so fast and early in the morning it's very unlikely the warning system would have had much effect.' Virdell said he doesn't recall the specifics of the bill or why he opposed it, though he guessed 'it had to do with how much funding' was tied to the measure. State Rep. Ken King's HB 13 would have created The Texas Interoperability Council and tasked it with crafting a statewide strategic plan governing the use of emergency equipment and infrastructure. Even if it had passed, it would not have gone into effect until Sept. 1, after the Hill Country flooding. The bill would have also created a statewide communications network for first responders and provided grants for counties to help pay for improved communications and warning systems, including radio towers. The bill's initial $500 million cost drew heavy criticism from fellow Republicans including state Rep. Tony Tinderholt, R-Arlington. 'This shouldn't be about anything other than the fact that it's a half a billion dollars,' Tinderholt, a hardline conservative and budget hawk, said during the April 1 House floor debate. 'This is probably one of the most simple votes we should be able to take today. It's that this interoperability council is going to spend money to try and get these departments to be able to talk together.' Steven Aranyi, a spokesperson for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, noted that lawmakers — including the Texas Senate, which Patrick oversees — made several 'unprecedented' investments in disaster response during this year's legislative session, totaling $547 million. That included: * $257 million for disaster response aircraft, * $135 million for regional operation facilities, * $90 million to provide ambulances to rural counties, * $65 million for emergency response drone technology. The flaw with HB 13, Aranyi said, was that it proposed rolling out the local grant money over an estimated timeline of up to 10 years. 'By the time any system was developed, it would be outdated due to advances in technology,' Aranyi said. 'The grants in the bill were limited to planning purposes only; they did not support disaster response.' King, R-Canadian, filed the bill in response to the devastating wildfires last year that engulfed the Panhandle, when more than 1 million acres burned and three people died. King, who lost part of his property in the fires, said he found communication problems as he led the investigative committee last year. King did not immediately return a call seeking comment. As the disaster quickly unfolded in Kerr County, located in the heart of an area known for flash floods, much has been made of the fact that the county lacked a siren system that counties in other parts of Texas have to alert residents of tornadoes. Such a system has been considered before in Kerr County, but quickly dismissed because the high cost would fall alone on local taxpayers. A flash flood watch was issued by the National Weather Service by Thursday afternoon for the region. Then, in the middle of the night, at 1:14 a.m. Friday, a flash food warning was issued as possibly 'catastrophic,' for Bandera and Kerr Counties, according to the NWS. Those alerts would have automatically triggered Wireless Emergency Alerts on enabled mobile devices, the weather service said. But because the alerts went out when most residents and visitors were asleep, coupled with the fact that many of those children attending summer camp as well as their counselors were without cell phones, the alerts likely went unheeded by many. Residents who were up before daylight on Friday 4 reported rain misting by 3 a.m. but nothing out of the ordinary. That changed quickly by 5 a.m. Friday when flooding was detected on roadways in Kerr County. The flooding reached its peak at around 6:45 a.m. in Kerrville, hours after warnings were first issued, according to the local flood gauge. Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly told reporters on Saturday local residents have rejected the idea of a siren system due to its expense when it had been suggested before. 'The public reeled at the cost,' Kelly said. At a news conference on Sunday, Gov. Greg Abbott left the door open to legislation aimed at improving emergency warning systems, but stopped short of saying he would put it on the agenda for lawmakers to consider during the special session he has scheduled to begin July 21. 'It's going to be something that will be looked at,' Abbott said. 'The reality also is this, and that is, what's needed in that river basin at that location could be far different than it was needed in some other river basin across the state.' For now, Virdell said his focus and that of officials in Kerr County is on locating more victims and helping residents. He said the collaboration between local responders and those others coming in from around the state has been 'amazing.' Talk of warning systems and how to improve communications will eventually happen, Virdell said, adding that, right now, the focus needs to be on the immediate community. 'That's the No. 1 priority for now,' he said. 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