That video! The water was clearly over the bridge. WOW!

Looks like more heavy rain tomorrow. Hopefully it's nothing like yesterday.

Did all those offices/businesses get flooded on the sw side of RR12 bridge in Wimberley?

That flat is up very high but you know it has to be part of the floodplain.

We were out west of Bandera yesterday afternoon looking at some properties, and ended up getting stuck in a bar in Tarpley. The bridge on 470 getting into Bandera was flooded and there was a huge CF of trailers there for a Memo Day trail ride. We were unable to backtrack to Utopia either. Waiting till about 9 and headed south to Hondo in attempt to get back to SA. There were probably 4-5 Hondo Creek crossings that were MOVING! We waiting probably 30-45 minutes at each crossing and watched water drop close to 3' in that short time span. Still forded 2' in the truck. All bridges were littered with debris, so we had to move alot of stuff out of the way.

Made friends with an older guy and his wife trying to get out like we were. He would follow me through each crossing after we waited. He was headed south like us but in a round about way to getting to his home in Blanco. Neither of us knew how bad Blanco was going to be. He was worried about his animals, hope they ended up ok.

Got home at 3am.

From the Victoria Aggravates..... This is a news release issued by the DeWitt Sheriff's Office:This Flood Warning warns of a rise above flood stage of the Guadalupe River by late morning on Tuesday, May 26, 2015 and continue rising to crest around 44 feet by Thursday morning, May 28, 2015.

At 29.0 feet...Moderate lowland flooding makes secondary roads and bridges very dangerous to auto traffic.DeWitt County is issuing a voluntary evacuation of all affected areas in and around the Guadalupe River effective immediately. Please take your medications and pets with you.

At 43 feet disastrous flooding in the west part of Cuero as flow escapes the Guadalupe River into Gohlke Creek. Severe flooding can displace homes juste west of downtown near Thomaston, 10 miles south of Cuero, hundreds of homes are flooded to over 10 feet. All roads into Cuero are closed except Highway 87. Hundreds of livestock are cut off and drown.At 40 feet massive flooding is occurring in the River Oaks, River Haven, and Cypress Valley subdivisions ten miles south of Cuero near Thomaston. Over one hundred homes are flooded up to nine feet requiring the evacuation of hundreds of people. All roads into Cuero are closed except Highway 87 which also closes several miles south of Cuero. The old CP&L plant floods. Hundreds of livestock in the area are cut off and potentially drowned. Flow threatens to pass across the flood plain into Gohlke Creek and Cuero.

Several families missing in Wimberley... horrible.
http://www.kristv.com/story/29145529/breaking-former-county-commissioners-family-among-missing-in-central-texas-floods

Jonathan's younger brother was in the corp at A&M. Keep them in your prayers.

https://www.facebook.com/TexasHillCountry/photos/a.307413635190.336102.226813135190/10155604914860191/?type=1

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https://www.facebook.com/TexasHillCountry/photos/a.307413635190.336102.226813135190/10155604914860191/?type=1

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Oh man.

Any word on if Downtown Wimberley was spared the worst of it? I imagine the Blanco caused Cypress Creek to back up quite a bit.

Damn... Praying for a miracle

Pretty sure downtown got flooded out from a picture I saw. The river got to about 43' I believe.

Go for high ground, get in a tree, something. The problem with these flash floods is they push a wall of debris in front of them as they advance and it entangles everything it washed over and the debris inflicts lots of injuries apart from the threat of drowning.

People who live on central Texas rivers need to understand the geography is prone to flash floods, and it doesn't have to rain a lot locally for one to occur.

All they can do is hope for the best.

I read the guy the found from that house in Wimberly said the whole house got pushed down the river for a bit. Then he thinks it hit something because it pretty much exploded & everyone went everywhere.

So terribly sad.

Damn. I think I know some of that guys relatives.

Does anyone know where exactly the house was the McCombs were staying in?

Found the red car that floated past our ranch hung up in the 165 bridge.

I think they have some family that are members at Champion Forest Baptist Church.

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Found the red car that floated past our ranch hung up in the 165 bridge.

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I don't think that's all of it...

Yep I think your right.

This is the only home for a Carey that I could find close to the river on the appraisal district.

Location

People were set up on the i35 service road fishing this afternoon At the red river

SWC I hope you folks are able to get everything to high ground.

Don't have anything on the San Marcos anymore, and the Guadalupe isn't on the rise much at all west of Gonzales. Dos Rios / Shelton place will probably be the first to flood on the Guadalupe.

I'm not even sure the San Marcos alone can cause as much flooding as they predict south of Gonzales, even a record flood. All that water is going to slow down and flatten out some. Not hitting an equivalent amount of water coming down the guadalupe may make this flood different from usual.

ETA:got cattle out of the river bottoms day before yesterday. Better safe than sorry, although I can't recall a non-tropical storm related flood in late spring/early summer. Probably haven't had many of those since canyon was built, anyway. San Marcos has no canyon or travis to catch the surge of water coming out of the hill country.

I've read some reports, quoting the Hays Co EMS Director as saying essentially, "hey, we started making reverse 911 calls at 7pm Saturday night, we did all we could do."

The problem is my grandfather's phone never rang and so many folks these days don't have home phones, not to mention the rental the McCombs were in. How effective is this practice? Meanwhile, this morning my cell phone is blowing up in Houston telling me that we're under a tornado warning.

How does this happen in Houston and not Wimberley? Granted, this is all in hindsight, but it seems to me the 300 homes that were destroyed were pretty easy to identify beforehand just tracing the Blanco. Would it have been that big a deal to dispatch Hays Co Constables or Deputies to these neighborhoods and just turn on your lights and get on your loud speaker and tell folks what's going on?

Also, the cell service is notoriously weak out there, no doubt because of the hills. I'm wondering if it would help the city if they tried to get more cell towers in the area. I know the baptist church in Wimberley just leased a cell tower location but I wonder if they could get better coverage out there. There are lots of lessons--and tragically expensive ones--to learn from the Blanco flood.

Also this is going to be a long rebuilding process. I believe they've redrawn the flood maps a couple of times over the last decade and it seems that they're going to have to redraw again before they ever issue a building permit. I fear it'll be a long while before Wimberley recovers from this one.

It's extremely unfortunate that there were people that were tragically affected by this that had no real warning. I don't doubt that the WPD/WFD did everything in their emergency management plan to alert everyone, but how out of date is that plan?

It's very unfortunate that holes in an EMP are only discovered when the plan fails.

On the topic of flood maps, those are pretty much drawn based on satellite elevations and topographic pictures. They're not very accurate as far as knowing the limits of a flood, just a suggestion as to what can be extrapolated ahead of time. NWI maps are notoriously awful and describing wetlands.

I agree.

Another problem is that Wimberley is a village, and to my knowledge, I don't believe they have a police dept and their fire dept is volunteer.

Hays County rescue (and I believe Austin/Travis Co helped as well) did an incredibly efficient job and I am extremely grateful they were able to get our relatives out of the second floor of their house off Flite Acres Rd. I just think that the review of this response is going to be critical for these types of procedures going forward.

I think most flood maps are done with models using LIDAR today. I interned with an engineering company back in the early 2000s that developed the first flood maps using that type of data set. This study was done in courtroom with the Harris county flood control district on Brays Bayou. FEMA flipped out because the data was too detailed. It was the beginning of FEMA's new digital maps.

As for the warning and cell phones, etc... Flash floods, like Mouth said earlier, happen so fast it's hard to get the warning out. Just like a tornado warning, the best information may be just a few minutes beforehand. Trying to get first responders to spread the word might be putting them in harms way.

We don't know what the flow rates were. The flood gages were wiped out all the way to Luling, but many of their last readings were just 10000 CFS. That tells me the water came up very quickly.

I know most of the Game Wardens I deal with are about worn ragged on water rescues.

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It's extremely unfortunate that there were people that were tragically affected by this that had no real warning. I don't doubt that the WPD/WFD did everything in their emergency management plan to alert everyone, but how out of date is that plan?

It's very unfortunate that holes in an EMP are only discovered when the plan fails.

On the topic of flood maps, those are pretty much drawn based on satellite elevations and topographic pictures. They're not very accurate as far as knowing the limits of a flood, just a suggestion as to what can be extrapolated ahead of time. NWI maps are notoriously awful and describing wetlands.

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There was warning that the flood was coming. The NWS issued flash flood emergencies saying this is a life threatening event. Weather radios were going off. Flash flood watches were issued a day or more ahead of the heavy rain. The media played up the threat. The biggest problem was the time of night it hit. I would bet many were caught sleeping as the river rose. No weather radios, a cell phone that doesn't EAS alert, no reverse 911 call, no sirens; they didn't receive the warning at night for some reason but the warnings were there. Same thing happened at an Arkansas campground in 2010. I've always wondered why the emergency services/counties don't have outdoor sirens along popular rivers in the hill country because this type of event happens too frequently to not have an outdoor siren system dedicated for flash flooding. Make it a different sound/tone than the tornado sirens and make sure campgrounds and neighborhoods along the river have the sirens.

With regards to flood mapping, GIS and lidar data has significantly improved the understanding of where floods go in recent years. NWS river flood warnings are now drawn to specifically cover the basins.

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There was warning that the flood was coming. The NWS issued flash flood emergencies saying this is a life threatening event. Weather radios were going off. Flash flood watches were issued a day or more ahead of the heavy rain. The media played up the threat. The biggest problem was the time of night it hit. I would bet many were caught sleeping as the river rose. No weather radios, a cell phone that doesn't EAS alert, no reverse 911 call, no sirens; they didn't receive the warning at night for some reason but the warnings were there. Same thing happened at an Arkansas campground in 2010. I've always wondered why the emergency services/counties don't have outdoor sirens along popular rivers in the hill country because this type of event happens too frequently to not have an outdoor siren system dedicated for flash flooding. Make it a different sound/tone than the tornado sirens and make sure campgrounds and neighborhoods along the river have the sirens.

With regards to flood mapping, GIS and lidar data has significantly improved the understanding of where floods go in recent years. NWS river flood warnings are now drawn to specifically cover the basins.

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It's very unfortunate that there were several people that were caught in this flood. I can offer nothing but prayers that anyone involved is found safe.

I've lived in this Wimberley/San Marcos area for 9 years and have wondered for years why the Wimberley area does not have any warning sirens along the Blanco river to indicate flooding is imminent.

San Marcos installed a warning system about 3-5 years ago for that purpose.

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Did all those offices/businesses get flooded on the sw side of RR12 bridge in Wimberley?

That flat is up very high but you know it has to be part of the floodplain.

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No flooding was reported at those businesses