Flash Flood Alley and My Scarred Knee

I didn’t mention this yesterday perhaps because I was still in shock, but the tragedy on the Guadalupe River continues to sit heavy in my mind.

Most summers when I was in middle and high school I went to a summer camp somewhere in Texas with my Boy Scout troop. We went to Possum Kingdom Lake in North Texas, Buffalo Trails in West Texas, and a few times went to El Rancho Cima in Central Texas along the Blanco River in Hays County. I still have a scar on my knee from running and falling on the concrete dam that crosses the Blanco.

That was in the 1990s but in 2015 a massive flood event wiped out El Rancho Cima, forcing it to permanently close as a scout camp. It is now preserved as a public park by the Nature Conservancy. It’s scary to think that during some summer rainstorm it could have been our tents that were wiped out by a similar event as the Guadalupe one that took so many camper’s lives.

In a podcast episode on water I’ve shared here many times, I noted the well known flash flood alley in Central Texas and the storm that took out El Rancho Cima.

“But in Hays County Texas the rising elevations of the hill country cause what is called the orographic effect in Texas’ own “Flash Flood Alley”. Weather systems hit hills or mountains and as the air rises, precipitation drops…fast. In 2015, Hays County was the epicenter for a massive flood event which destroyed many homes and took lives. That same weather system pummeled Houston as well, inundating Buffalo Bayou by raising the water levels from 3 feet to 34 feet in just an eight hour period. You might say that this is what scientists call a 100 year flood. The problem is, Houston has had two of them in just two decades.”

I made this episode in 2015, ten years ago. I believe Houston has had a few more 100 year floods since then. As climate change happens, weather events such as these will happen more often. Weather events will become more extreme as hot air can hold more moisture and drop it faster.

This will happen more often and everywhere. Even here in San Francisco, a rain storm that dropped five inches in a single day leaked into my basement. I’ve since fixed the 1890s planter box that allowed that to happen but we have a lot of work to do on the overall issue of climate change.

It’s going to get worse before it gets better but we will get there. Obviously there have been setbacks, but the world is moving in the right direction.

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