Record Summer Of Flooding - TX, NM, NJ, DC - Driven By Warming Oceans And The Moisture They Send Inland

[hatrack]

In the week and a half since floods killed at least 130 people in Central Texas, heavy rains have filled New York subway stations, submerged busy roadways and drowned two people in a vehicle in New Jersey. Storms have stranded Washington-area motorists. Deadly torrents returned to a flood- and fire-scarred region of New Mexico. And meanwhile, flooding rains have yet to relent in Texas.

Downpours and thunderstorms are a familiar signal of summer — but this one has been different. Barely halfway through, it’s already been a hyperactive season of often fatal flooding, with more than twice as many floods as usual so far this July, according to National Weather Service reports.

While there are varying meteorological forces behind this month’s extreme rainfall, what has connected them all is significant amounts of atmospheric moisture pulsing above the country. It is flowing from abnormally warm oceans across the Northern Hemisphere that are likely to stretch elevated flood risks into August, data shows — perhaps into record territory. The conditions are allowing plumes of tropical moisture to stretch into middle latitudes and stagnate there, sending flood risks surging and exemplifying a critical consequence of rising global temperatures that researchers have been predicting and tracking for decades.

“Global warming changes the odds,” said Kevin Trenberth, a distinguished scholar with the National Center for Atmospheric Research who has published on the topic of increasing atmospheric water vapor since the 1990s. Additional flooding rainfall is likely this week in areas that have already been hit hard, including in Texas on Tuesday, the Midwest and the East through the rest of the week, and along the Gulf Coast from a possible tropical storm starting Thursday.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2025/07/15/extreme-rainfall-deadly-flooding-explained/