FRANKLIN COUNTY, Mo. – Devastating flash flooding in central Texas has claimed the lives of nearly 90 people, as well as several children at a summer camp near the Guadalupe River.
As the death toll continues to climb, meteorologists at FOX 2 News and the National Weather Service Forecast Office in St. Louis say a similar weather system affected our viewing area a quarter of a century ago.
“With the Bourbeuse River and the Union flash flood, that river rose 16 feet in about five hours,” Marshall Pfahler, National Weather Service meteorologist, said. “So, we had a prolific flash flood event in May 2000 that impacted the Union, Missouri area. There were slow moving thunderstorms and really high rainfall rates for an extreme period of time.”
On May 7, 2000, 10 to 15 inches of rain fell over Franklin County late that Saturday evening.
“There was a kind of this spin in the atmosphere. Some thunderstorms had kind of moved on away from those thunderstorms and invigorated new development of thunderstorms over the same area,” Pfahler said. “When that happens, you get a lot of rainfall and so all that rainfall runs off into these small river basins and has to get channeled off somehow.”
In Kerr County, Texas, the death toll continues to rise after flash flooding—nearly 30 feet in less than three hours—took the lives of 27 children and counselors at Camp Mystic, an all-girl’s Christian summer camp. Ten are still unaccounted.
Two people from Union, Missouri, died in the May 2000 flood event, as rescue workers deployed boats to save Franklin County residents in the middle of the night.
“There are areas more favored than others to have flash flooding,” Pfahler said. “Usually, your low-lying areas and adjacent to rivers, especially these small rivers, can respond very quickly to heavy rainfall.”
With the May 2000 and current Texas flash flooding tragedies in mind, the National Weather Service is reminding people to have a weather radio or app on their phones, and to know your immediate geographic surroundings and to have a plan of action in case of severe weather.
