AccuWeather's Jon Porter and Brett Anderson explain the key contributors that led to the horrific flooding that took place in Camp Mystic in Kerr County, Texas, over the Fourth of July weekend.

Kerr County

Meteorologists from AccuWeather have outlined the key factors that contributed to the deadly flooding at Camp Mystic in Kerr County, Texas. Heavy rainfall rates of two to four inches per hour fell on arid soil, causing rapid runoff from higher to lower elevations. The camp's location in a low-lying, FEMA-designated floodway, combined with the presence of earthen dams and nearby tributaries like Cypress Creek, amplified the flooding risk.

Cabins most affected were situated in the lowest areas, where water was forced by the terrain and dams into a concentrated floodway. Some campers were able to escape by moving to higher ground nearby. Flash flood warnings were issued by authorities and AccuWeather meteorologists prior to the event, but the combination of environmental and structural factors created a scenario that led to significant loss of life.

What caused the flooding tragedy at Texas' Camp Mystic?

The terrain and also the location of some of the cabins along with the type of soil really was a huge factor in the tragedy. Joining us right now to break this down and to add a little more explanation of what happened and why is our chief meteorologist Jonathan Porter and our climate expert Brett Anderson with a closer look at Mystic cabins in Texas. Guys? Alright Bernie, thank you very much. We wanted to look at some of the more specific details here that contributed to this horrible tragedy and we had, as we've been talking about here in the Texas Hill Country over the last several days, there was a focus of two to four inch per hour rain rates over the same area west of Kerrville near Hunt and Camp Mystic on arid soil and all that water ran off from the higher elevations into the lower elevations and we want to zoom in here Brett into near the Camp Mystic area and of course this is the area where there was such a tremendous loss of life and we want to look at some of the factors that were involved here in creating this serious flooding. Yeah, we had again here's the river here coming this way, here's the camp over here and you can see here a very low lying area here, this green area is very low lying area and then here's the cabins that were directly impacted by the flash flood here but one thing that really sticks out here John is this looks like an earthen dam and so when you have this wall of water coming in here very quickly it's going to hit that earthen dam. On this side of the river it's very high so on this side it's not quite as high so it hits this dam and where's it going to go? Instead of going right down the river a lot of it's going to be forced right down into this what we call basically a floodway, a FEMA designated floodway. Yeah this is a FEMA designated floodway including much of this part of the camp and a lot of this is based on our research and also reporting of some of the facts from the New York Times and the Washington Post on the ground and notice these were the cabins where some of the youngest campers were located where that wall of water would have been coming at them and some of the other cabins are located a bit high in a higher elevation and it's believed that many of the campers that thankfully were able to survive were able to move up this little hill here to get to a higher elevation. It was that close where it was a little bit higher elevation so they could escape that water that was pouring in. Yeah and you had high elevation here, higher elevation here behind the cabins, higher elevation over here so it's almost like a box canyon in a way and the other thing we also have to think about is Cypress Creek running right through there so another danger with more water coming in from another direction. Yeah that was another tributary of the Guadalupe River which again right is up in here. The Cypress Creek that could have been flooding, there's another earthen dam over here that may have also been a factor so essentially we had water pouring into all of these directions and that's why that problem was amplified in this particular part of the camp when this camp had been along for quite a long time and of course those flash flood warnings issued by the government at 114 a.m. would have provided ample notice for evacuations and other activities to occur. The question is what steps were taken at this camp and other locations and of course AccuWeather meteorologists had warned of the flash flooding 30 minutes before as well. So gentlemen when you just break it all down and you add the weather into it, it was a recipe for a disaster. It seems that way, yeah. It was. It was all those factors conspiring together. AccuWeather chief meteorologist Jonathan Porter along with climate expert Brett Anderson, thanks for the insight.

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