I'm a Climate Scientist in Texas. Here's What the Floods Tell Us

Time​ Magazine

11 hours ago

Late into the night of Friday, July 3, the remnants of tropical storm Barry combined with an unusually humid air mass. Together, they dropped more than four months' worth of rain—at least 1.8 trillion gallons, roughly enough to cover the entire state of Texas in four inches of water—in just four hours. Much of this rain fell over a picturesque stretch of the Texas Hill Country dotted by summer camps, vacation homes, and cypress trees, where it quickly drained into the Guadalupe River.
The timing—overnight, on a holiday weekend—the intensity of the rainfall in the river watershed, and the vulnerable location combined into a worst-case scenario. By the early hours of the morning, river banks were overrun and a flash flood began to surge downstream. By 4.30am, the stream gauge at Hunt, TX had risen 20 feet in just 90 minutes, putting hundreds of people downstream in immediate harms' way.
As a climate scientist who calls Texas home, I can tell you that the Hill Country of Texas is no stranger to flooding. Meteorologists often refer to it as 'Flash Flood Alley' because of its steep terrain, shallow soils, and its history of sudden and intense rainfall.
So that night, despite recent federal cuts that doubled the number of their vacant positions, the local National Weather Service (NWS) office was fully staffed. They issued timely warnings that escalated quickly as the risk of flash flooding intensified. Some received and heeded them. At Mo Ranch, a camp my son once attended, leaders who'd been keeping an eye on the river and the weather alerts moved campers and staff from riverside buildings to higher ground in the middle of the night. But tragically, many more did not.
The resulting death toll from the nightmare flood that swept through that morning is already well over 100 people. It includes local residents, vacationers, and saddest of all, many young campers and counselors from Camp Mystic, a beloved 99-year-old all-girls camp on the banks of the south fork of the Guadalupe River as well as the directors of both Camp Mystic and the nearby Heart O' the Hills Camp. Over 170 more remain missing in Kerr County, and the exhausting work of recovery is just beginning.
Texas is no stranger to floods and other weather extremes. In fact, Texas is tied with Arkansas for the second most billion-plus dollar flood events of any state other than Louisiana. But as the world warms, that warmer air holds more moisture; so when a storm passes through, it's capable of dumping much more rain than it would have, fifty or a hundred years ago. As a result, what used to be considered a 500-year flood has already happened multiple times in recent memory. The city of Houston experienced three such events from 2015 to 2017 alone. And so-called 100-year floods are becoming commonplace.
This trend underscores an important truth. Climate change isn't creating new risks: rather, it's amplifying existing ones. Texas already experiences more extreme weather events with damages exceeding a billion dollars—floods, heatwaves, hurricanes, wildfires and more—than any other state. And it's already seeing longer, more dangerous heatwaves, stronger hurricanes, bigger wildfires, and yes—heavier downpours, too.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Texas averaged less than two of such damaging extreme events per year. Since then, the numbers have escalated quickly, with 16 extreme billion-dollar events in Texas in 2023–and 20 in 2024. Unfortunately, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) stopped updating these figures under the Trump Administration, citing 'evolving priorities, statutory mandates, and staffing changes.'
With the risks changing so quickly, it's no longer enough to look to the past as a guide to the future. We need to prepare for what's coming, not just what's happened before. That means that we need more data, more expertise, more preparation, more communication, and more follow through, to keep people safe. Radars, stream gauges, weather models and emergency notification systems—we need them all, more than ever.
How can this be accomplished? Agencies like the NWS, NOAA and FEMA must be funded and staffed to expand the public services we rely on, paid for by our tax dollars. Preparedness must be prioritized as cities, towns, and counties allocate their resources. The more climate change supercharges our extremes, the more we need reliable, timely, and actionable ways to keep people out of harm's way.
This may seem obvious– yet today, the opposite is happening. Eight of the 122 NWS offices around the country can no longer operate around the clock after the firings of probationary employees and early retirements. Moving into hurricane season, NOAA announced the Defense Department would no longer share data from key weather satellites that track hurricane paths. Most recently, the Trump Administration shut down the U.S. government website hosting the National Climate Assessments I've contributed to since the Bush Administration. These assessments are the most comprehensive and authoritative source of forward-looking information we have in the U.S. on how climate change is already altering the risks of extreme weather across Texas and the broader United States.
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Keeping people safe on a warming planet also means preparing our infrastructure and building resilience in advance. It's common sense to invest in flood protection and early warning systems such as could have made a difference in this disaster. And these options are on the table: in Texas, voters will decide in November whether to dedicate an additional $1 billion annually to the state's Water Fund, money that could be used to support flood resilience.
Despite the misinformation and anti-science rhetoric that often overwhelms social media after disasters like this, a majority of people— 63 percent in Texas and across the U.S.—are already concerned about climate change. A flood doesn't stop to ask about your politics before it sweeps away your home. Regardless of where we live or how we vote, extreme weather puts us all at risk: and we know, without a shadow of a doubt, that it's getting worse due to climate change.
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The good news is this: solutions are at hand. Shifting from fossil fuels to clean energy is one of the best ways to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases that are building up in the atmosphere, essentially wrapping an extra blanket around the planet and causing it to warm. What many may not realize is that Texas leads the U.S. in clean energy innovation, from wind and solar to breakthroughs in energy storage and geothermal.
And at The Nature Conservancy, where I serve as chief scientist, we're working with cities and states to advance nature-based solutions that absorb floodwaters and protect communities from extreme heat. This includes advocating for expanded support for flood mitigation efforts in Texas from the new Water Fund.
As individuals, we can't implement an emergency warning system or overhaul a community's energy sources on our own—but we can use our voices to advocate for them. Too often, even after a disaster, we don't have the deeper conversations about what rising climate risks mean for our future. As a result, most people aren't prepared for the impacts when they hit home—whether it's skyrocketing home insurance costs, or a disastrous flood that arrives overnight. And because policymakers rarely hear from those who care, they often underestimate how much public support there really is for action. Yet these are not altruistic investments. Every dollar invested in climate resilience across the U.S. and globally yields an estimated tenfold return—even when no disaster occurs.
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As individuals, our voice is the most powerful force we have to drive change. And for me, as a parent whose own child once went to camp along the Guadalupe River, the choice is clear: doing nothing—and saying nothing—isn't an option if we want a better future for our children.