July is flash flood emergency season now

By Andrew Freedman, Mary Gilbert, CNN

(CNN) — The US has experienced a spate of flash flood emergencies during the past two weeks, illustrating July’s dangerous side. The month has featured multiple 1,000-year rainfall events across the US, and July is not over yet.

Flash flood emergencies are the highest-level flood warning, and more than a dozen of them have been issued across the country so far this month. This puts July 2026 within striking distance of a monthly record for such warnings.

A 1,000-year flood hit Texas Hill Country between July 15 and 17. Some areas received almost a year’s worth of precipitation in just a few days, sending deadly waves of water shooting down rivers and streams. There’s a 0.1% chance of a flood like this happening in any given year. But this was the second year in a row that one hit this part of central Texas.

This was just one of the rash of flash flood emergencies recently issued across the country. There have been 15 flash flood emergencies over the past two weeks. West Virginia experienced record flooding during one on Tuesday night; Utah on Sunday in a wildfire burn scar; Missouri’s 1,000-year rainfall event came the week before Texas, as campers were rescued from cabin rooftops and trees.

Flash flood emergencies are usually rare situations, when extremely heavy rain is leading to a significant threat to human life and catastrophic damage is already occurring or expected to occur imminently, according to the National Weather Service. But extreme rainfall is becoming more common as the world warms.

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An analysis released in April by the nonprofit research group Climate Central found that out of 144 US cities they examined, 90% of them saw an increase in hourly rainfall intensity between 1970 to 2025. In those 129 cities that saw the increase, hourly rainfall rates are now 15% higher on average than they were several decades ago, with increases seen in every region of the country.

The culprit for these trends is human-caused climate change. For every temperature increase of 1 degree Fahrenheit, the air can hold 4% more water vapor. And the United States has warmed by nearly 3 degrees on average since 1970, Climate Central found, leading to a huge jump in the water vapor available for heavy downpours. Warming oceans, too, help increase atmospheric water vapor.

Storms tap into this added moisture and end up churning out heavier precipitation in an effect that has long been predicted in national climate assessments. Now, we’re seeing those predictions take shape in reality to devastating effects on the ground.

The number of flash flood emergencies issued in the US this year continues to tick up, and the tally stands at 32 as of July 21. While this year is running behind 2025’s 49 emergencies at this point in the year and 2024’s 38 such warnings, nearly half of 2026’s flood emergencies were issued in July alone. And many of them have been catastrophic.

2024 is the record-holder for the most flash flood emergencies in a single year, with 93 such warnings. Last year had 55, which was the second-highest on record. While 2026 is behind the record annual pace so far, if this summer of flooding continues, it could catch up quickly.

Flooding reached historic levels in parts of West Virginia’s Upshur County on Tuesday afternoon and evening, after more than 5 inches of rain fell in about six hours. The National Weather Service called the event a “particularly dangerous situation.”

One stream gauge in this flood zone crested above 10.6 feet Tuesday night, breaking the previous record of 8.3 feet set during a devastating 1985 flood. It was the first time in roughly 80 years of record keeping that this gauge had reached major flood stage.

And there may be more flash flood emergencies to come before the month is out, as moisture from Tropical Storm Bertha interacts with a stalled cold front over the southern Mid-Atlantic and Carolinas, dumping up to a month’s worth of rain from Wednesday on into the weekend.

Some severe episodes of flash flooding have avoided the “emergency” label but nonetheless caused damage and disruption.

For example, New York endured weather whiplash on July 18 as the city lurched from a heat wave and smoke pollution from Canadian wildfires to flash flooding from slow-moving thunderstorms that dumped a few inches of rain in a short period of time. Water rushed into subway stations and stalled cars on city roadways.

Flash flood warnings were then issued again for New York City and nearby states as thunderstorms crawled across the region on Tuesday afternoon and evening.

The city’s infrastructure is not designed for the higher rainfall rates of a warming world, making flash flooding increasingly common and severe in the Big Apple. In 2021, for example, flooding from the remains of Hurricane Ida killed 13 people there, some of whom were trapped in basement apartments.

New York isn’t the only place suffering because the existing stormwater infrastructure was built for a climate that no longer exists. But the city does illustrate the challenge that many other urban areas face.

New York’s stormwater system can only accommodate rainfall rates of up to 1.75 inches per hour, but this is being exceeded with increasing frequency. When the remnants of Ida hit in 2021, more than 3 inches of rain fell in just one hour, setting a record and causing the stormwater system to back up into basements, subway tunnels, sewers and drains, and turning streets into rivers.

Even considering the shift to more frequent and intense heavy precipitation events, this July has been extraordinary for its catastrophic flooding that has affected disparate parts of the country. And there are no signs of a lengthy dry spell to come, either.

But with climate change, the pace of this July’s flash flooding, and that of the past two years, may just be the new normal for mid-summer.

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