Click the link to read the article on the NBC News website (Denise Chow). Here’s an excerpt:
July 10, 2025
First the river rose in Texas. Then, the rains fell hard over North Carolina, New Mexico and Illinois. In less than a week, there were at least four 1-in-1,000-year rainfall events across the United States — intense deluges that are thought to have roughly a 0.1% chance of happening in any given year…At least 120 people were killed across six counties in central Texas’ Hill Country region last week, after heavy rain caused catastrophic flash flooding. The Guadalupe River, near Kerrville, surged more than 20 feet in 90 minutes during the storm, washing away roads and causing widespread devastation. Days later, on Sunday, Tropical Storm Chantal drenched parts of North Carolina. Extensive flooding was reported across the central portion of the state, with some areas receiving nearly 12 inches of rain in only 24 hours. Local officials are still confirming the total number of deaths from the flooding, all while the region is under another flood watch Thursday. In New Mexico on Tuesday, at least three people were killed by devastating flash floods that swept through the remote mountain village of Ruidoso, about 180 miles south of Albuquerque. And in Chicago that same day, 5 inches of rain fell in only 90 minutes over Garfield Park, prompting multiple rescues on the west side of the city.
“The probability is 0.1% for your location each year, so it’s very unlikely to occur where you are, but over an entire country, some of them are going to happen somewhere each year,” said Russ Schumacher, director of the Colorado Climate Center at Colorado State University and the state climatologist…
It’s often tricky to untangle the precise influence that climate change had on individual weather events, but scientists agree that severe storms are more likely in a warming world — along with more intense rainfall.
“This is one of the areas where attribution science is more solid, because the underlying physics is relatively simple,” Schumacher said.
A warmer atmosphere can hold more water, making storms capable of dumping huge amounts of rain over land. Studies have shown that for every degree Fahrenheit that the planet heats up, the atmosphere can hold around 3% to 4% more moisture.