The catastrophic flooding in central Texas was described by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration hydrologist Greg Waller of the West Gulf River Forecast Center in Fort Worth, Texas, as the perfect storm when it comes to forecasting rivers.
“In the river forecasting world, this was one of those that we will be training our forecasters on, because we know it will happen again,” Waller told The Epoch Times. “[Maybe in] 10 years? Twenty years? Thirty years? But we do know it will happen again, and we have to have this dataset available for experience.”
That perfect storm combination of circumstances brought together the moisture remnants of Tropical Storm Barry up from Mexico with a low-pressure system called a trough over a geologic formation Waller called a Balcones escarpment, which causes air masses to rapidly rise hundreds of feet and trigger intense storms, as well as an area of shallow soil on rocky terrain susceptible to becoming large and fast moving masses of runoff….