Texas Floods Kill Two and Rescue 200 After Guadalupe River Rises

UVALDE, Texas — The Guadalupe River rose thirty feet in a single night. It didn’t just overflow its banks; it turned into a white-water highway, swallowing roads and mobile homes with the same indifference it showed last July.

A $14 million tragedy, repeated. At least two people are dead, and more than 200 have been rescued from waters that are still rising. Governor Greg Abbott confirmed Thursday that the region, which was already reeling from a catastrophic event twelve months prior, is bracing for more rain. Some rivers are expected to hit historic levels again by Friday.

Let’s do the math on this recurrence. Last summer, flash floods killed more than 100 people during the July Fourth holiday. This time, the death toll is currently two, but the scale of disruption is massive. The National Weather Service reported up to 28 inches of rain fell in Uvalde County over three days. Other areas saw roughly a foot.

The geography hasn’t changed, but the response has. Abbott noted that more than 2,000 first responders were deployed, with evacuations starting before the worst of the surge. Residents in the Texas Hill Country said they received more warnings this time around. Forecasters issued urgent alerts: “Move to higher ground now!”

On paper, this looks like progress. In practice, the water doesn’t care about your alerts.

The victims illustrate the suddenness of the threat. One driver was swept away on a flooded road near Uvalde. The other died in Kerr County, where 65-year-old John Mark Steward’s mobile home was lifted off its platform and floated down Goat Creek. His wife, Jennie Steward, found his body Thursday. She was visiting her parents when a neighbor called, saying the water had risen to the door of their home. The two had spoken by phone Wednesday night, celebrating their third anniversary.

“It’s really hard that I wasn’t there with him,” Jennie Steward said.

Josiah Rodriguez, a Kerrville resident, navigated flooded roads to help evacuate relatives after waking to heavy rain around 2 a.m. He noted the difference in preparedness compared to last year’s surprise event.

“It’s crazy happening two times in one year,” Rodriguez said. “Last year there was no warning of it... This year, a lot more alerts have gone into place, a lot more safety measures.”

Abbott summed up the situation with a warning to those living on or near rivers: “No one can be complacent.”

The Vail Daily reported the details of the ongoing crisis, highlighting that while Uvalde County was spared from the worst of last year’s flooding, it has now been hammered by this second wave. The Guadalupe River, which wrecked Camp Mystic last summer when two dozen children and counselors died, is barreling down again.

For locals in the Hill Country, the cost isn’t just measured in lives lost or homes floated away. It’s measured in insurance premiums, road closures, and the psychological toll of living in a floodplain that refuses to stay dry. The infrastructure holds, for now, but the water is testing it twice in twelve months.

The bottom line: The region is wetter, the response is faster, but the river remains a powerful, unpredictable force. If you live near the Guadalupe or Goat Creek, your property value and your peace of mind are both on the line.