Tremendous and Sheer, 43rd Day of Summer, 525 M.E. (Castor):  The Edwards Plateau of central Texas rises above the adjacent Gulf Coastal Plain along the Balcones Fault Escarpment. According to my old, battered copy of Nevin Fenneman's Physiography of the Eastern United States (1932), the Edwards Plateau, also known as Texas Hill Country, is underlain by the Wichita and Fredericksburg limestones. The Hill Country is notable for its karst topography and tall rugged hills. The landscape is further dissected by many rivers, including the Guadalupe, and the surrounding hills rise 400–500 feet above the surrounding valleys. Throughout the region, a thin layer of topsoil leaves rocks and boulders exposed, making the region very dry and prone to flash flooding, much like paved, urban environments. 

Kerr County (Texas) historian Joe Herring, Jr. notes that Camp Stewart was established in 1926 on the South Fork of the Guadalupe near the confluence with Cypress Creek. A year later, Camp Stewart became Camp Mystic for Girls. In the early days, Camp Mystic consisted of 1400 acres, and the girls were housed in 18 log cabins constructed from cypress logs cut on the camp's property. Today, the camp occupies 700 acres and has been in continuous use except for two years when the U.S. Army took it over during World War II to serve as a center for veterans to recover from war injuries.

The USGS maintains a stream gaging station on the Guadalupe River at Hunt, Texas, near Camp Mystic. Floods there are considered "major" if the stream gage exceeds 22 feet, which has happened three times (1978, 1986, and 2001) since 1966. However, the largest known flood occurred in 1932, before regular monitoring had begun. On July 2 of that year, the gage height reached 36.6 feet and the flow was 206,000 ft³/sec, equivalent to 2.34 Olympic-sized swimming pools every second.

Camp Mystic and other camps along the Guadalupe were hit hard by the 1932 flood. Buildings and property were washed away overnight.  Herring reports that new structures were subsequently built above the flood levels and many campers slept in tents instead of cabins that year, and viewed those accommodations not as a hardship, but as a great adventure.

According to Herring, another flood hit the Guadalupe in 1935, and though most camps had rebuilt above the flood plain, questions arose about the safety of camping along the Guadalupe and attendance at some camps had begun to suffer.

The flood that just occurred this year on the Guadalupe caused the gage at Hunt to rise to 37.5 feet on July 4, almost a foot higher than the 36.6 feet recorded in 1932. However, although the gage was higher this year, the reported discharge, or flow, at 4:35 am was 120,000 ft³/sec (1.36 Olympic-sized swimming pools per second), far less than the 206,000 ft³/sec reported for 1932. I suspect that the stream gage may have been changed or adjusted at some point after 1932 (this is not uncommon), as a higher river level (gage height) means greater discharge (river flow). 

Regardless of the discrepancies in the data, the 2025 flood is comparable to that of 1932. Tragically, this year's flood still managed to wash away campers and counselors at Camp Mystic, despite the buildings having been moved to above the 1932 flood level. This raises the question of whether the camp had reoccupied the lower elevations impacted by the earlier flood, or if new structures (barracks?) were constructed down in the floodplain, perhaps when the Army took over during WW II.

 

Which Past Was Hers,  42nd Day of Summer, 525 M.E. (Betelgeuse): My heart breaks reading about the 78-and-counting deaths in Texas from flooding on the Guadalupe River. I can't imagine the anguish of the parents who learn their children were swept away from a summer camp by the floodwaters. It's beyond comprehension and well beyond tragic. 

But in these times we live in, everything becomes political and everything is about finger-pointing and blaming others. The left is blaming climate change and government budget cuts, the right is blaming the National Weather Service. As a hydrogeologist, I can't let this incident pass without my own two cents (spoiler alert: I don't blame either side). 

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declared today a “day of prayer” for the victims, both surviving and deceased. If prayer helps you get through this, then fine, go ahead and pray, but don't expect it to change anything.

The director of the Texas Division of Emergency Management has faulted the NWS for not predicting “the amount of rain we saw,” even though alerts were issued beforehand and as it became clear the region was facing an emergency.  A flash-flood watch was issued Thursday afternoon that noted Kerr County, where much of the flooding began early Friday morning, was a particularly vulnerable area, along with more urgent flash-flood emergency alerts in the overnight hours as the disaster unfolded. The Emergency Management director should be asking why his agency didn't do more to heed the NWS' warnings and advisories, and work proactively to mitigate the situation by evacuating people in the flood zone while it was still possible.  

Also, the NWS was one of several federal agencies targeted by the Stable Genius' DOGE boys, which had laid off nearly 600 employees, around the same amount of staffers the service lost in the 15 previous years.

But the staffing shortage wasn't the issue, and Monday-morning quarterbacking Emergency Management's decisions isn't the solution. It's not the cause, but the underlaying issue here is climate change, as little as some people want to hear that. To be clear, the flood wasn't "caused" by climate change. This morning, I heard Chris Christie say on This Week that no one will ever convince him that Hurricane Sandy was caused by climate change. Governor, I agree. If someone tells you it was caused by climate change, they don't know what they're talking about and you can safely ignore them.   

Climate change doesn't cause rain, hurricanes, floods, wildfires, or droughts. They're caused by meteorological and atmospheric processes, but climate change does increase the severity and frequency of storms, hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and droughts. And it also impedes scientists' ability to forecast extreme weather events.

Flood forecasting is basically a statistical exercise. The USGS has been monitoring the Guadalupe River since October 1941, and has developed statistics on the frequency and intensity of flood events based on the 84-year record. Based on the monitoring history, scientists can calculate the average flow rate (53 ft³/sec) and the maximum flow rate (599 ft³/sec, recorded in 2002). As a 599 ft³/sec flood occurred once in 84 years, one can state that the chance for a flood of that magnitude happening in any given year is 1-in-84, or a 1.2% chance. FYI, the 100-year flood is the flood that has a 1% chance of happening in any given year.

Today, the river is flowing at 872 ft³/sec, shattering the 23-year-old record of 599 ft³/sec. To give you an idea of the volume, today's flow would fill an Olympic-size swimming pool every 90 seconds. 

The available, online data shows the river has flooded eight times between October 2007 and June 2025, meaning the gage level was above 10 feet, and two of those floods were "moderate," with the gage over 18 feet. A flood is considered "major" if the gage exceeds 22 feet, and today the river level topped 37.5 feet, another record. 

From the monitoring data, one can calculate a "flood frequency," i.e., the river floods x number of times per year, and extreme floods occur once every x years. Of course, the frequency alone can't predict when the flood will actually occur, but coupled with rainfall and meteorological data, there is sufficient information to issue flood watches and flood warnings when appropriate.

Climate change, however, throws a monkey wrench into the calculations. With conditions changing so rapidly, the past is no longer a useful indicator of the future, or even of the present. The x number of years extreme floods occur is increasing and increasing rapidly, and if we only consider, say, the last 10 years to calculate flood frequencies, well, that's not enough data to be meaningful. Statistically, the data-point population isn't significant enough for the calculated frequencies to be meaningful. Nowadays, we have so-called "100-year floods" occurring annually or every few years, with each flood more severe than the one before.  

Computer models can simulate the "new normal" and can provide useful statistics of the expected flood frequencies and flood levels in our new climate, but due to climate skepticism and denial, the results aren't trusted and the effort is being rapidly defunded by the government. So the old tools don't work, the new tools aren't trusted, half the country's underwater, and the other half is on fire.

But Gov. Abbott's gonna pray the flood away, so I guess we'll be alright.

Apparent Doorways, 41st Day of Summer, 525 ME (Atlas): I'm old. I'm so old that I've been collecting Social Security for five years now. My communications with the SSA are generally minimal - usually just an annual notice about the cost-of-living adjustment and an occasional warning to be on lookout for fraud and scams.

Thursday, I received an unusual message from them with the heading, Social Security Applauds Passage of Legislation Providing Historic Tax Relief for Seniors. It sounded like propaganda, and in fact that's exactly what it was. The email read:

The Social Security Administration (SSA) is celebrating the passage of the One Big, Beautiful Bill, a landmark piece of legislation that delivers long-awaited tax relief to millions of older Americans.

The bill ensures that nearly 90% of Social Security beneficiaries will no longer pay federal income taxes on their benefits, providing meaningful and immediate relief to seniors who have spent a lifetime contributing to our nation's economy.

The email falsely claimed the big, bad budget bill includes "a provision that eliminates federal income taxes on Social Security benefits for most beneficiaries . . . ensuring that retirees can keep more of what they have earned."

However, the Stable Genius' budget bill does not actually eliminate federal taxes on Social Security like the email claimed. The rule, passed through the reconciliation process to avoid a Democratic filibuster, provides a temporary tax deduction of up to $6,000 for people over 65, and $12,000 for married seniors. These benefits will start to phase out for those with incomes of more than $75,000 and married couples of more than $150,000 a year.

Need I point out that a temporary tax deduction is not the same thing as eliminating federal tax on benefits?  

The big, bad budget bill also includes provisions that will strip many people of their health insurance, cut food assistance for the poor, kill off clean-energy development, and raise the national debt by trillions of dollars, but the email doesn't mention that. Further, the bill imposes a new limit on all itemized deductions and makes permanent the termination of most miscellaneous itemized deductions. So whatever savings and gained from the over-65 deduction may disappear due to the limit on all deductions. 

New Jersey congressman Frank Pallone wrote on X that “every word” of the email is a lie. “It’s disturbing to see Trump hijack a public institution to push blatant misinformation,” he wrote. Kathleen Romig, a former senior adviser at the SSA during the Biden administration, told CNN the email “doesn’t sound like normal government communications, official communications. It sounds like – you know – partisan.”  Jeff Nesbit, who served as a top SSA official under Republican and Democratic presidents, went further, posting on X, “The agency has never issued such a blatant political statement. The fact that Trump and his minion running SSA has [sic] done this is unconscionable.”

Vibrant Threshold, 40th Day of Summer, 525 M.E. (Helios): On this Interdependence Day, I give you the MAGA Prayer, inspired and adapted from a passage I read today in James Joyce's Ulysses:

I believe in ICE, the scourge almighty, creators of hell upon earth, and in the musky DOGE, those sons of a gun, who were conceived of unholy boasts, bored of their Bloody Marys, suffered under Trump and Vance, were calcified, dread, and curried. On the third day, they arose again from their beds, descended to Mar-a-Lago, sitteth on their butt-ends until further ordered, whence they shall ask for a living but shall not get paid. And to the Republicans, if you can stand them, one nation, under guard, with liberties and justice for one.

On this, the 249th anniversary of the founding of this nation, I would wish it well but the joke's on us: amerika's already over, the man who sold the world has exchanged the country for syphilisation (another Joyce-ism).

 

Each Note Felt, 39th Day of Summer, 525 M.E. (Electra): Today, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Stable Genius' big, bad budget bill. They made no changes and passed it just as the Senate had sent it over to them. They voted to close rural hospitals, to throw millions off of Medicaid, to kneecap alternative energy, and to add trillions to the national debt. I won't go into all the negative impacts the bill will have on our lives - I haven't read the entire, nearly 1,000-page document, and others describe it in far better detail elsewhere. Do your own homework and read up on it yourself.

I will say this - some of the worst parts, like the Medicaid cuts, deliberately won't kick in until after the 2026 mid-term elections, so we won't have experience the full impact of this awful legislation until after the Republicans have a chance to try and get reelected. But don't fall for it: it's too late to negate all the ill effects this will have on this nation, but the sooner we begin the long, protracted healing process the better. 

Vote the bastards out of office. In Georgia, this includes Marjorie Taylor Greene (naturally), Rick Allen, Buddy Carter (at what age does a grown man stop calling himself "Buddy"?), Andrew (Day of Peaceful Tourists) Clyde, Barry Loudermilk, Richard McCormick, Austin Scott, Brian Jack and his cheesy siblings, Monterey and Pepper, and Mike Collins and his brother, Tom Collins (just kidding - that one's a cocktail, but I need one after this vote).

So here we go, amerika, the longest I-told-you-so in recorded history. 

 

Pacing and the Unshed, 38th Day of Summer, 525 M.E. (Deneb): I hate to jinx it by saying it out loud, but it's nearly 9:00 pm here in Georgia and the House Republicans in Washington still can't seem to find the numbers to pass the Stable Genius' big, bad budget bill.

They're really in a quandary: if they oppose it, the Stable Genius promises they will lose their House seats to a primary challenger. If they support it, the will lose their seats to a Democrat in the General Election. They lose either way: it's a lose-lose choice. Heads, I win; tails, you lose.

Since they're on their way out either way, may I suggest they vote not to close rural hospitals, throw millions off of Medicaid, kneecap alternative energy, and add trillions to the national debt? Just winging out ideas here.   

Day of Fallacies, 37th of Summer, 525 M.E. (Castor): The Senate approved the Stable Genius' budget bill today. Three Republican senators - Susan Collins (Maine), Rand Paul (Kentucky), and Tom Tillis (North Carolina) - voted against it, and it took a tie-breaking vote by the VP JD  to pass it. It now goes back to the House for reconciliation, where it's expected to pass. 

On top of recent Supreme Court rulings, this is another win for the Stable Genius. "You're going to get sick of winning," the SG predicted on the 2016 campaign trail, and he was right (at least the part about getting sick). The bill will add at least $3.3 trillion to the nation’s debt over the next 10 years, making it among the most expensive bills in a generation, and will also reduce the amount of tax revenue the country collects for decades. Such a shortfall could begin a seismic shift in the nation’s fiscal trajectory and raise the risk of a debt crisis.

To be blunt about it, it destroys this country. But to the oligarchs and billionaires who'll benefit, that's a price worth paying. Who needs America when you can own a second megayacht? 

The rest of us will have to scrape by, tooth and nail, among the increased heat, the police oppression, the pervasive hunger, and the endemic sickness, to survive as best we can. On the positive side, it's been noted that the arts and spirituality tend to flourish during difficult times. 

I think we're in for a veritable renaissance in the arts and spirituality.