Flash flood video from Center Point Texas

[MrPoling]

Very well done video showing the flash flood on the Guadalupe river. Hopefully, I found the original video.

The river goes from nearly dry to impassable in thirty seconds. In a little over thirty minutes, the entire flood plane is full.

I've been told this kind of thing can happen, but watching it really drives home how fast the river can change.

 

[Boatman53]

Thanks for sharing, it was amazing. Such speed and power.
Jim

 

[Erica]

This morning the news said the river rose 25 feet in 45 minutes. Many of these Western rivers can behave this way. It may not even be raining where you are paddling. Rain upstream can cause flash floods.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

I don't think I've ever seen the approach of a flash flood river bore like this. Thanks for posting, MrPoling.

 

[Gamma1214]

Wow. Yes, thanks for posting.

That's an incredible amount of water in what appeared to be an almost dry streambed. I was compelled to watch the whole thing.

The power of moving water never ceases to amaze... I'd be interested in seeing the area after the water recedes.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

The power of moving water never ceases to amaze... I'd be interested in seeing the area after the water recedes.

The Cheat River suffered a 100 year flood on Election Day 1985, devastating Albright, West Virginia, which is the put-in town for the Cheat Canyon run. The river rose 30 feet with a flow of almost 200,000 cfs in the narrow canyon.



The Connecticut AMC whitewater club paddled the Cheat Canyon the following spring. Buildings were gone in Albright: raft companies, the gas station, houses. Major rapids were reconfigured. You could see household belongings stuck 20 to 30 feet up in the branches of surviving riverbank trees. It was like being in a post-Apocalypse movie.

 

[Gamma1214]

Growing up as I did in SW PA, a trip to Johnstown and the flood museums there were inevitable. Looking at the old photos, I've never been sure which to be more amazed by: the amount of devastation that the city endured or the fact that so many buildings actually survived the 60 foot high, 40 mile per hour wall of water.

 

[Will Derness]

In the summer of 1986 4 canoes paddled an overnighter on the upper Potomac, the classic Paw Paw bends trip. One guy brought his 6/7 year-old son. The previous year, 1985, the Potomac experienced a major flood.

As we paddled down stream, we happen to go under quite a few (4-6) railroad bridges that crossed the river. The railroad tracks were about 50 feet above our head and the most of the triangular structural supports for the rail bed were all below the tracks. The airspace of those triangular supports were completely filled with debris. - trees, chairs, hot water heaters, cows, machinery, etc. We explained to the 6 year old how all that debris happened to get there.

Later that day, after camp has been made and we are sitting around the fire in a light drizzle our young lad, Austin, starts to cry, somewhat uncontrollably. Concerned, we all try to determine what has him crying, an injury or something? Once Austin regains control of his breathing he manages to haltingly tell us we are all going to die. He fears the light drizzle will cause another flood. It took all of us quite awhile to convince him otherwise.

 

[ppine]

The weather reporting, flood prediction and warning systems in Texas failed.

It is common for peak discharge to happen at night. Afternoon and early evening thunderstorms dump a lot of water in Texas in a hurry. There is some lag time for the water to runoff and accumulate during the night. There was a similar flood event in 1987 on the Guadalupe River. Reducing the funding for the National Weather Service and NOAA did not help. Neither do the notoriously lax building codes in Texas.

 

[MrPoling]

A few weeks ago I was at a 4H camp. There were canoes on a lake. There was a class where the kids where given boots, a gallon basin, and turned loose in the creek to catch aquatic critters.

Image you had 15 kids catching crawfish and 30 seconds of warning to get them to safety. Or a half dozen canoes zig-zagging around in a little lake behind a low head dam.

I don't know what safety plan I would implement, but preparing would be a critical. I think keeping the staff vigilant would be a constant challenge.

 

[Pseudonym]

That video is terrifying.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

During and after at various places along the river. Narrated.

 

[Erica]

The current death toll is over 100 people.

And I can’t believe how long they waited to close that bridge down. (First video)