Alan - I’ll share more thoughts as I can formulate them, but I want you to know this short “commemorative essay” is an absolute masterpiece. I am in violent agreement with your perceptions of the state of affairs with our country’s flash flood problem. I want to understand what more of us in the broader weather hazards community can do to address this issue.
Again - great work today, and over the past year, in exploring this tragedy and its implications.
Alan, I appreciate and have appreciated all of your coverage of this horribly tragic incident. It was always going to be tragic but was made so much worse by the failures of those in authority to carry out the duties with which they were charged. Thank you!
Thank you for sharing your discussion of the Kerr County flash flood. It brought back a very personal memory for me.
I was a senior in high school at the time of the Big Thompson flood, driving to Estes Park with my girlfriend to spend the weekend with her parents at their cabin. We were headed up State Highway 36 from Boulder, and I remember becoming increasingly uneasy as the storms developed and the sky grew darker. At that point, I was not some die-hard storm chaser, nor was I fully committed to meteorology in the way my life would become during college and the following 45 year carrer with NOAA. But for reasons I still do not fully understand, I stopped, turned the car around, and drove back home in real fear. The atmosphere simply felt like something more hideous was unfolding.
The next morning, I remember reading the Denver Post and learning the scale of the tragedy.
Years later, I had the privilege of working with some of the premier scientists who wrote the definitive studies of the Big Thompson flood and helped develop many of the major flash-flood forecasting techniques: Robert Maddox, Ray Hoxit, Michael Fritsch, and Charlie Chappell, who captured the essence of flash flooding with the idea that floods occur where it rains the longest and hardest. I also attended many of the Big Thompson anniversary symposiums and saw firsthand the constant struggle between government forecasting, private-sector forecasting, warning responsibility, and public response. I still remember heated arguments over who correctly forecast the Big Thompson event.
But the most impactful presentation I ever heard was from the coroner who worked with the Big Thompson victims. His message was haunting: there is almost nothing more devastating to the human body than a flash flood, because it can erase nearly all of a person’s identity. This was before DNA identification was available in the way it is today.
In the end, flash floods are beyond tragic. In many respects, they are incomprehensible in terms of the raw power of water to reshape landscapes, destroy communities, and alter the course of human lives in minutes. We should take the lessons of both the Big Thompson and Kerr County floods to heart. These events are more frequent than we often acknowledge, and we remain too ignorant of the true power of flooding.
But we should also remember the power that lies within people to make decisions that save themselves and others. Preparedness, awareness, humility, and action matter. Sometimes the difference is a forecast, sometimes it is a warning, and sometimes it is simply the uneasy feeling that something is wrong and the decision to turn around.
I made some comments in the comment section for the Atlantic article criticizing the whole “10,000 year flood“ reference and the idea that this was an extreme and unpredictable event, stating that there was absolutely nothing unusual about that flood. The historical record as well as what the area’s geology shows when the river is viewed from above both show that plenty of floods that size have happened in the past. The reasons this one killed so many people compared to earlier ones are that (given the increase in population in Texas) more people are recreating near the banks of that river, too many people either did not hear or did not heed the National Weather Service’s flash flood warnings, and the flood happened in the early hours of the morning when most people would be asleep.
We need better warning systems, and also a LOT more public education about the dangers of flash floods (including how they differ from the more typical, slowly developing flood, which is easier to escape). We owe the victims that!
Alan - I’ll share more thoughts as I can formulate them, but I want you to know this short “commemorative essay” is an absolute masterpiece. I am in violent agreement with your perceptions of the state of affairs with our country’s flash flood problem. I want to understand what more of us in the broader weather hazards community can do to address this issue.
Again - great work today, and over the past year, in exploring this tragedy and its implications.
Thank you my friend
Alan, I appreciate and have appreciated all of your coverage of this horribly tragic incident. It was always going to be tragic but was made so much worse by the failures of those in authority to carry out the duties with which they were charged. Thank you!
Thank you Alynda 🙏
You’re welcome! And thanks for all the coverage about the heat waves in Europe and the East Coast.
Alan,
Thank you for sharing your discussion of the Kerr County flash flood. It brought back a very personal memory for me.
I was a senior in high school at the time of the Big Thompson flood, driving to Estes Park with my girlfriend to spend the weekend with her parents at their cabin. We were headed up State Highway 36 from Boulder, and I remember becoming increasingly uneasy as the storms developed and the sky grew darker. At that point, I was not some die-hard storm chaser, nor was I fully committed to meteorology in the way my life would become during college and the following 45 year carrer with NOAA. But for reasons I still do not fully understand, I stopped, turned the car around, and drove back home in real fear. The atmosphere simply felt like something more hideous was unfolding.
The next morning, I remember reading the Denver Post and learning the scale of the tragedy.
Years later, I had the privilege of working with some of the premier scientists who wrote the definitive studies of the Big Thompson flood and helped develop many of the major flash-flood forecasting techniques: Robert Maddox, Ray Hoxit, Michael Fritsch, and Charlie Chappell, who captured the essence of flash flooding with the idea that floods occur where it rains the longest and hardest. I also attended many of the Big Thompson anniversary symposiums and saw firsthand the constant struggle between government forecasting, private-sector forecasting, warning responsibility, and public response. I still remember heated arguments over who correctly forecast the Big Thompson event.
But the most impactful presentation I ever heard was from the coroner who worked with the Big Thompson victims. His message was haunting: there is almost nothing more devastating to the human body than a flash flood, because it can erase nearly all of a person’s identity. This was before DNA identification was available in the way it is today.
In the end, flash floods are beyond tragic. In many respects, they are incomprehensible in terms of the raw power of water to reshape landscapes, destroy communities, and alter the course of human lives in minutes. We should take the lessons of both the Big Thompson and Kerr County floods to heart. These events are more frequent than we often acknowledge, and we remain too ignorant of the true power of flooding.
But we should also remember the power that lies within people to make decisions that save themselves and others. Preparedness, awareness, humility, and action matter. Sometimes the difference is a forecast, sometimes it is a warning, and sometimes it is simply the uneasy feeling that something is wrong and the decision to turn around.
Ken
I made some comments in the comment section for the Atlantic article criticizing the whole “10,000 year flood“ reference and the idea that this was an extreme and unpredictable event, stating that there was absolutely nothing unusual about that flood. The historical record as well as what the area’s geology shows when the river is viewed from above both show that plenty of floods that size have happened in the past. The reasons this one killed so many people compared to earlier ones are that (given the increase in population in Texas) more people are recreating near the banks of that river, too many people either did not hear or did not heed the National Weather Service’s flash flood warnings, and the flood happened in the early hours of the morning when most people would be asleep.
We need better warning systems, and also a LOT more public education about the dangers of flash floods (including how they differ from the more typical, slowly developing flood, which is easier to escape). We owe the victims that!