Sunrise in Alpine, Texas, July 5, 2025, as we were departing for San Antonio, taking my son to camp.
This year’s July 4th holiday turned tragic for campers and vacationers in the Texas Hill Country along the Guadalupe River near Kerrville. I was already flight planning a trip from Alpine, Texas, to San Antonio to drop my son off at a nearby camp (not one on the Guadalupe River that was affected) for him to attend his last year at camp way before any of this happened. I had been looking at the weather for several days in advance. In fact, in the days before, we were thrilled with the copious amounts of rain that had fallen in and around Alpine from the same storm front. I took videos and pictures of the arroyos on the ranch filling with rushing water, and I was amazed at how little water can become dangerous.
At one point, my daughter and her friends left the ranch to get supplies from town. They were gone for an hour, and in that time, the ranch received almost an inch of rain. After four years of drought, the water ran fast down the mountains and into Bird Creek, blocking the road to the house. I did not know it yet, but just to the east, this same storm was causing catastrophic damage to the Texas Hill Country.
On Saturday morning, July 5, 2025, we woke up to the news of the Kerrville tragedy. We departed Alpine enroute to San Antonio with heavy hearts for all of those waiting to hear the fate of their campers and loved ones. My Air Traffic Control (ATC) assigned route from Alpine took me direct to the Centerpoint VOR near Kerrville and then into the arrival for San Antonio and an eventual instrument approach to Runway 13R. The day was cloudy with storms east of San Antonio still threatening more flooding. Kerrville was spared additional widespread flooding, but the areas near Austin and north had their flooding to deal with. I encountered some rain on the approach, but for the most part, the trip was smooth and without complications. From the air, nothing was amiss about what was happening below.
This is a trip I’ve taken many times before, and in any other circumstance, there would be no reason to write an article about it. But on this day, we lifted off just a few hours after the most devastating flood the Texas Hill Country has ever seen. Scores of people were missing, and at the time we left Alpine, the latest reports listed twenty-six dead from the flooding. That number would rise dramatically in the next few days to above a hundred.
Visibility on my arrival was obscured by a low-lying cloud layer, although the rain below had stopped temporarily. While I could not see below, I could not ignore the overwhelming emotion I felt on the flight. It is the first time on many flights that my son did not go to sleep on the trip, and instead, we talked about what happened. He was nervous about attending camp even though his camp is not on a river. I had seen sporadic reports of the devastation, and the news showed pictures of the grieving families. I knew that I would have a connection to at least some of the families affected. I found out later that a friend had a son working as a counselor at one camp, and one of my daughter’s friends was a counselor at another one of the camps that lost so many campers. My sisters and friends have countless other stories of relationships to people who survived, died, or are missing. The whole event is simply too tragic to comprehend.
I have strong memories of the Texas Hill Country. I grew up in San Antonio, went briefly to one of the hill country camps that was destroyed, and have friends with ranches and houses in the area. When I was younger and still lived in the area, we drove to Gruene Hall and drank beer and watched such greats as Jerry Jeff Walker, Robert Earl Keen, and Willie Nelson there and at Flores Country Store outside Bandera. Friends and I rafted and fished in the Guadalupe, and many returned as we got older and bought river houses. The Texas Hill Country is a gathering place for all Texans because of its beauty and tranquility. Summer camps have existed in this area for generations because of the number of lakes and rivers in the area and proximity to some of the state’s biggest cities. The irony is that the lake system is supposed to act as a flood control device, preventing disasters like the one that occurred.
As I prepared to leave Alpine for San Antonio, I spent time flight planning the trip. Flight planning for any cross-country flight takes many phases. Pilots research the destination airport, review the Notices to Airmen (NOTAMS) for any anomalies along the route of flight or at the destination airport. The plane is pre-flighted, oil is checked, winds aloft and on the ground are reviewed, and flight-planned fuel is scrutinized. Modern, general aviation aircraft of all sizes have on-board radar either through XM satellite or ADS-B weather. While we all know that these services are delayed, they are certainly helpful in avoiding bad weather if used correctly. Many larger general aviation planes even have real-time on-board radar that, when used properly, can be extremely helpful in looking through the weather in front of you.
Even with all of these onboard tools, most pilots devote the majority of flight planning on the ground to weather. I often think about how the older pilots used to flight plan cross-country flights with such limited information. Modern pilots have so much digital data available that there can be weather information overload. We have access to winds on the ground and aloft, area forecasts, prognostic charts, forecasts as far out as ten days, icing probability at different flight levels, and areas expected to be convective. Even with all of the planning, we routinely have to ask the ATC controllers for deviations around weather because something has popped up unexpectedly. This is especially true in summer weather when the air on top is cold and colliding with the warm air below. Late afternoon cumulonimbus clouds grow in the summer heat, threatening severe turbulence and torrential downpours along our routes of flight. But as pilots, we usually have the luxury to see the weather in front of us either directly or with the use of weather radar. We have the added ability to avoid these storms by either turning left or right, or turning around completely to go back the direction we came. We can land, wait out the storm, and continue the trip when the danger is gone.
Even with all of the technology, reports of flight into destructive turbulence and convection continue to make aviation headlines. Why, as skilled pilots, do we not heed the warnings we researched so intensely before leaving the ground? We all know of “get-there-itis.” The term pilots use for making poor decisions because of the desire to get to a particular destination. It is usually because we want to get home or fulfill a vacation obligation, appear at a special event, or we are simply tired from a business trip and want to sleep in our own bed. I think any pilot who has any measurable hours would admit to making at least one stupid mistake while flying that could have ended very badly. It is usually after that decision that the person says, “Never again.” We are humans, and we make mistakes in judgment, even when we have all the information telling us not to proceed. And even when we have families waiting for us at home.
Before my July 5th flight, my sister called me during taxi to tell me she had seen the forecast of more rain coming to San Antonio. Her comment was, “I’m sure you already checked, but I wanted to tell you our forecaster on TV is calling for more rain this afternoon.” I appreciated the information and told her that with all of the information I had reviewed, my timing would put me on the ground well before any of the new storms arrived. I was right, but I was also more vigilant in checking my radar as I got closer to San Antonio to be sure the rain had moved east as anticipated. Was the forecaster she saw on TV wrong? I don’t think so – just as I don’t think the forecasters were wrong on July 4 in the Texas Hill Country. Weather is volatile and changes rapidly, especially in the summer when dealing with tropical weather coming up out of the Gulf of Mexico. The forecasters used the information they had and issued warnings as new information developed. Unfortunately, the campers and revelers along the river were asleep and most likely without cell service to heed the warnings as they were issued. When they went to bed, the forecast was heightened but not dire.
There are a lot of questions about why there were not more warnings, or more timely warnings, or a physical alert system in the area. I read a statement by one resident that said something to the effect that warnings in the hill country are issued routinely this time of year because of likely storms. Sometimes those storms materialize, and sometimes they do not. Over time, she said, the population gets “warning fatigue” and the warnings are ignored. I’m sure all of the data will be scrutinized at a later date. For now, it does not matter. Lives were lost, and for some reason, it seems so much more hopeless when the majority of the dead and missing are children. I have heard so many times over the years that parents should never outlive their children. I believe that to be true because the heartache of losing a child must be incurable.
As a pilot, the more hours you fly, the larger your margin becomes for understanding what weather you can fly in, fly near, or know to avoid. We have to be careful not just of “Get-there-itis,” but also of “warning fatigue,” similar to what the woman was talking about in reference to the hill country weather. On any given day, ForeFlight has boxes demarking convective sigmets, low-level obscuration, IFR conditions, extended convective forecasts, and more. Radar and satellite predictions are usually pretty accurate. However, we know that when reading the weather updates, many of the warnings, while still active, do not represent current weather conditions. Weather outlined in the warning may have moved on or dissipated. It is easy to begin to give these notices less emphasis after planning hundreds of flights. Luckily, we have choices in the air. Maybe a little more time to make the correct decision if our pre-flight planning was not a thorough as it should have been. The kids and adults along the Guadalupe did not. They were caught unaware, and the destruction to the place and to the families is unimaginable. I do not know whether the most sophisticated warning device could have saved everyone in this situation. Those of us who fly have a lot of automation at our fingertips, and it does not always save us.
On Sunday, just two days after the July 4 tragedy, I drove my son to Bandera, Texas, and dropped him at camp. I had a hard time reconciling his happiness being there and the welcoming counselors greeting all of the arrivals with the reality of what had just taken place a few miles north and a few hours before. Those camps and residents are still cleaning up and going about the grim task of recovery. But the unaffected camps have a business to run, and it only runs during the summer. Hopefully, all camps, not just in the Texas Hill Country, but any near water, will learn from this. No one expected the flood, just as no one predicted Hurricane Helene in North Carolina to destroy so many lives. These are weather anomalies, and they are hard to predict. The only thing we do know for sure is that no amount of preparation can save us from Mother Nature when she is irritable. We can only use the tools we have at hand now and hope we learn for all of the future campers along the Guadalupe.
My son and his cousins are in their last year at camp and are in the oldest cabin. Like many of the camps, the older you get, the more you move up the hill to the prestigious “upper cabins.” It is a coveted spot, similar to the senior parking spot in high school. I cannot imagine what it must have been like the day before the flood for these proud, older kids looking down on all of the years they had spent in the river cabins. They must have been proud to have made it to the top. I have no doubt many would now change places with the young ones if they could.
As pilots, we reach milestones and think we have made it to the top – whether it is our first 100 hours or our first 1,000, it is a great feeling of accomplishment. But we are fallible, and life is precious. There are too many ways to get hurt in an airplane. Weather does not need to be one of them. We have so many more tools in our toolbox than those on the ground. Use them wisely and fly safely.
