The Guadalupe, 4 July 2025: one night's flood, before and after

In the early hours of 4 July 2025 the Guadalupe River rose in a few hours through the Texas Hill Country, past the summer camps above Hunt, Camp Mystic among them, and on to Kerrville. Many people lost their lives. This story does not tell that loss, which is not in these data. It reads what the instruments recorded: the rain from orbit, the river at three gauges, the valley from Sentinel-2 before and after, and the climate ahead and El Niño in climate-shift.

Loading the numbers…

—peak flow at Hunt, 4 July measured

—times the largest flow in the gauge's record before it measured

—of rain in 3 days on the camp's cell, by satellite estimated

—of low ground scoured along the river estimated

measured by satellite, by a gauge or from the geometry itself. estimated projected by climate models, or a reading that depends on a threshold. missing a part that did not respond this time.

A river cut into limestone

The other UmaTerra platforms do not cover the United States. This story runs on climate-shift, which does, on the USGS gauges and on satellite layers prepared for this page in Earth Engine.

The rain of one night

Moist air stalled over the Hill Country on the night of 3 July. NASA's IMERG estimates the rain every half hour from a constellation of satellites.

The river in a few hours

Three USGS gauges report the river every 5 to 15 minutes: at Hunt, on the North Fork just above it, and at Kerrville.

Beyond the record

The darkest bar is 2025; the two mid-blue ones are the floods of 1932 and 1987.

Before

The reach from above the camp to Hunt, from Sentinel-2.

After

The same reach, the same satellite, the next clear scene after the flood.

What the water took

Where green vegetation became bare ground on low land by the river, the water passed with force.

The bend of the river

Closer: the USDA's aerial photograph of 2022.

The land around

climate-shift follows every pixel of the 5 km circle in the Annual NLCD, from 1985 to today.

The rain ahead

What nine climate models project for this place by 2041–2070, and what that kind of reading can and cannot see.

El Niño and La Niña

climate-shift's ENSO tabs: the phase of the Pacific, and what each phase has done to the rain here.

The app's own words

climate-shift writes a short reading of every circle from its numbers.

Where every number came from

Every number on this page comes from a public service or dataset, listed here.

What this story does not say

It does not count the people. The lives lost on the Guadalupe are not in satellite images or gauge records, and this page does not try to put a number on them.

It does not judge warnings, decisions or responsibility. Who knew what, and when, is for the inquiries and the courts; the instruments only record water and land.

It does not measure depth or speed. The gauges give height and flow at three points; the satellite gives the ground before and after, not the water in between.

It does not attribute this storm to climate change. That takes an attribution study of the event; the projections here are 30-year means, and they do not say which night will come.

Another story: Katrina, 2005 →

Written with Claude Opus 5.5, by Anthropic, from the numbers Earth Engine, the USGS and climate-shift computed: no number comes from the model. Versão em português.