Death toll surpasses 100, including Camp Mystic counselors and campers

As of early this morning, all flood watches have been dropped for Texas. 

However, a few flood warnings remain in effect, which are issued when a hazardous weather event is imminent or already happening.

Those flood warnings include the Leon River at Gatesville affecting Coryell County, Cowhouse Creek near Pidcoke, and the San Saba River affecting San Saba County, according to the National Weather Service. 

Today will be much drier compared to the last several days, with only scattered afternoon thunderstorms possible. Tomorrow’s forecast is similar, with widespread rain not expected, but instead spotty storms. 

Given the sensitivity of the river system and soil, isolated flooding can’t be ruled out. 

Battling the heat, mud and misery, they’re looking for any sign of life. Search and rescue teams on the Guadalupe River furiously comb through massive mountains of debris.

It’s an all-out search for survivors by water, air and horseback. Homes across the area have been marked with an orange “X,” meaning that the property has been searched. NBC News found one RV that had been flipped over, with all its contents destroyed.

Among those who died was Julian Ryan, who saved his family from rising water that suddenly swelled inside their home.

“My husband started panicking because there was no way to get out, there was no way for us to get up,” his wife, Christina, said.

Diana Smith said she woke up to find her house surrounded by water, so she called 911, but nobody immediately came.

“I said a prayer when I was standing on my porch,” she said. She managed to jump into a kayak with her dogs and paddled to safety.

Missouri Task Force 1, part of the Boone County Fire Protection District, was activated by FEMA to deploy to Texas, focusing on water rescue operations and capabilities for detecting human remains. 

The 50-member team departed from Columbia, Missouri, to Kerr County last night. 

“The team will support search and rescue operations in response to the historic flooding affecting the region,” according to a news release. 

The task force includes four human remains detection canines and their handlers, as well as an additional search team manager. They’ll be in Texas for up to 14 days. 

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue’s Urban Search and Rescue Team, also known as Florida Task Force One, was also activated. 

The seven-member team, including two canine search teams and support personnel, was deployed to assist in ongoing search operations in Texas. 

Wynne Kennedy, who lost her house in the floodwaters in Texas, recalled how her 10-year-old daughter, Lucy, was airlifted to safety from Camp Mystic. 

“She said that around 12:30 a.m., they all woke up to a giant crash of lightning. The counselors comforted them, but she kind of had a hard time going back to sleep. I believe around 1:30 a.m. or 2 a.m., she heard people screaming and yelling just to get out,” Kennedy explained. 

Trucks arrived at the camp to evacuate the girls and the counselors helped them out of the cabin.

“I think that the water came on so fast, and I believe maybe from multiple directions. All the adults there that were in trucks were just trying to get to whichever cabin they could to evacuate just because it was so quickly,” Kennedy added. 

Kennedy praised the girls for their “instincts just to get to higher ground.” Her daughter and the other campers ran to the rec hall and piled onto a loft upstairs, waiting for the waters to recede until daylight. Eventually, they were evacuated, and Kennedy’s daughter was taken by helicopter, along with about 14 other girls, to a nearby high school, where she was examined.

“She’s very strong. She has her moments. She did witness a dear friend of hers being swept away. So, you know, she has moments she gets very emotional,” her mother explained. “But luckily, she’s a student at the Hunt School, and we have an amazing counselor there that she’s very close with. So she’s already begun meeting with her.”

There is a slight chance that rain and storms could continue across Texas today and into Thursday. Still, the National Weather Service has indicated that a weakness in the high-pressure weather system has moved and should provide some relief from storms.

“This weakness will promote instability and allow scattered thunderstorms to pop up across the Arklatex region during the heat of the day today,” the service said in a 4 a.m. ET update.

“This slight northeastward shift in the position of the weakness should allow a break in the thunderstorm activities across the flood-ravaged region of south-central Texas today.”

Some areas could experience heavy rain from storms moving east across the region, but this is expected to taper off by tonight and continue into tomorrow.

The weather service office in San Antonio stated that the chance of rain will gradually decrease today, while temperatures are expected to increase.

Samuel Cummings spent much of yesterday wading through knee-high floodwaters, trudging across muddy fields, digging into mounds of dirt and slashing through thickets of brush with a chain saw.

But the physical demands of the search and recovery efforts near flood-battered Kerrville were nothing compared with the emotional gut punch of what Cummings saw strewn underfoot: girls’ Crocs and tennis shoes, volleyballs and water bottles.

Read the full article here.

North Carolina’s governor says about 120 roads in the state are closed because of severe flooding. Eric Miller of WRAL in Raleigh reports on the historic storm and ongoing rescues.

As heavy rain triggered flash flood warnings along the Guadalupe River in Texas Hill Country early Friday, the small unincorporated town of Comfort had something its neighbors upriver in Kerr County didn’t: wailing sirens urging residents to flee before the water could swallow them.

Comfort had recently updated its disaster alert system, installing a new siren in the volunteer fire department’s headquarters and moving the old one to a low-lying area of town along Cypress Creek, a tributary of the Guadalupe that is prone to flooding. Friday was the first time the new two-siren system had been used outside of tests, providing a last-minute alarm for anyone who hadn’t responded to previous warnings on their cellphones or evacuation announcements from firefighters driving around town.

“People knew that if they heard the siren, they gotta get out,” said Danny Morales, assistant chief of the Comfort Volunteer Fire Department.

Read the full article here