The US has skilled a spate of flash flood emergencies in the course of the previous two weeks, illustrating July’s harmful aspect. The month has featured a number of 1,000-year rainfall occasions throughout the US, and July is not over but.
Flash flood emergencies are the highest-level flood warning, and greater than a dozen of them have been issued throughout the nation to date this month. This places July 2026 inside putting distance of a month-to-month file for such warnings.
A 1,000-year flood hit Texas Hill Country between July 15 and 17. Some areas acquired virtually a yr’s value of precipitation in just some days, sending lethal waves of water capturing down rivers and streams. There’s a 0.1% probability of a flood like this taking place in any given yr. But this was the second yr in a row that one hit this a part of central Texas.
This was simply one of many rash of flash flood emergencies lately issued throughout the nation. There have been 15 flash flood emergencies over the previous two weeks. West Virginia skilled record flooding during one on Tuesday night; Utah on Sunday in a wildfire burn scar; Missouri’s 1,000-year rainfall occasion got here the week earlier than Texas, as campers were rescued from cabin rooftops and bushes.
Flash flood emergencies are often uncommon conditions, when extraordinarily heavy rain is resulting in a big menace to human life and catastrophic harm is already occurring or anticipated to happen imminently, according to the National Weather Service. But excessive rainfall is changing into extra widespread because the world warms.
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An analysis launched in April by the nonprofit analysis group Climate Central discovered that out of 144 US cities they examined, 90% of them noticed a rise in hourly rainfall depth between 1970 to 2025. In these 129 cities that noticed the rise, hourly rainfall charges are now 15% greater on common than they had been a number of a long time in the past, with will increase seen in each area of the nation.
The offender for these developments is human-caused local weather change. For each temperature improve of 1 diploma Fahrenheit, the air can maintain 4% extra water vapor. And the United States has warmed by almost 3 levels on common since 1970, Climate Central found, resulting in an enormous leap within the water vapor obtainable for heavy downpours. Warming oceans, too, assist improve atmospheric water vapor.
Storms faucet into this added moisture and find yourself churning out heavier precipitation in an impact that has lengthy been predicted in nationwide local weather assessments. Now, we’re seeing these predictions take form in actuality to devastating results on the bottom.
The variety of flash flood emergencies issued within the US this yr continues to tick up, and the tally stands at 32 as of July 21. While this yr is operating behind 2025’s 49 emergencies at this level within the yr and 2024’s 38 such warnings, almost half of 2026’s flood emergencies had been issued in July alone. And a lot of them have been catastrophic.
2024 is the record-holder for essentially the most flash flood emergencies in a single yr, with 93 such warnings. Last yr had 55, which was the second-highest on file. While 2026 is behind the file annual tempo to date, if this summer time of flooding continues, it may catch up rapidly.
Flooding reached historic ranges in components of West Virginia’s Upshur County on Tuesday afternoon and night, after greater than 5 inches of rain fell in about six hours. The National Weather Service referred to as the occasion a “particularly dangerous situation.”
One stream gauge on this flood zone crested above 10.6 toes Tuesday evening, breaking the previous record of 8.3 toes set throughout a devastating 1985 flood. It was the primary time in roughly 80 years of file protecting that this gauge had reached main flood stage.
And there could also be extra flash flood emergencies to come back earlier than the month is out, as moisture from Tropical Storm Bertha interacts with a stalled chilly entrance over the southern Mid-Atlantic and Carolinas, dumping as much as a month’s value of rain from Wednesday on into the weekend.
Some extreme episodes of flash flooding have averted the “emergency” label however nonetheless precipitated harm and disruption.
For instance, New York endured climate whiplash on July 18 as town lurched from a warmth wave and smoke pollution from Canadian wildfires to flash flooding from slow-moving thunderstorms that dumped a couple of inches of rain in a brief time frame. Water rushed into subway stations and stalled automobiles on metropolis roadways.
Flash flood warnings had been then issued once more for New York City and close by states as thunderstorms crawled throughout the area on Tuesday afternoon and night.
The metropolis’s infrastructure is not designed for the upper rainfall charges of a warming world, making flash flooding more and more widespread and extreme within the Big Apple. In 2021, for instance, flooding from the stays of Hurricane Ida killed 13 folks there, a few of whom had been trapped in basement residences.
New York isn’t the one place struggling as a result of the prevailing stormwater infrastructure was constructed for a local weather that now not exists. But town does illustrate the problem that many different city areas face.
New York’s stormwater system can solely accommodate rainfall charges of as much as 1.75 inches per hour, however this is being exceeded with rising frequency. When the remnants of Ida hit in 2021, greater than 3 inches of rain fell in only one hour, setting a file and inflicting the stormwater system to again up into basements, subway tunnels, sewers and drains, and turning streets into rivers.
Even contemplating the shift to extra frequent and intense heavy precipitation occasions, this July has been extraordinary for its catastrophic flooding that has affected disparate components of the nation. And there are not any indicators of a prolonged dry spell to come back, both.
But with local weather change, the tempo of this July’s flash flooding, and that of the previous two years, may be the brand new regular for mid-summer.