Texas, flash flood
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"Let's put an end to the conspiracy theories and stop blaming others," Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said in a statement.
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Authorities confirmed Wednesday that 120 people have died in the central Texas floods. Follow for live updates.
Public officials in the area have come under repeated criticism amid questions about the timeline of what happened and why widespread warnings were
Heavy rains fell quickly in the predawn hours of Friday in the Texas Hill Country, causing the Guadalupe River to rise 26 feet in just 45 minutes.
This is false. It is not possible that cloud seeding generated the floods, according to experts, as the process can only produce limited precipitation using clouds that already exist.
The heavy rain that turned a river in Texas into a raging wall of water was fueled by unique atmospheric conditions, according to meteorologists and climate scientists.
Texas leads the country in flood deaths. Steep hills, shallow soils and a fault zone have made Hill Country, also called "flash flood alley," one of the state's most dangerous regions.
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"There has been a lot of misinformation flying around lately, so let me clarify: the Texas Department of Agriculture has absolutely no connection to cloud seeding or any form of weather modification," Miller said in a statement.
There are reports some cloud seeding occurred a few days before the Texas flash flood. But it’s important to understand that cloud seeding has a relatively short-term effect in that a certain cloud is seeded and perhaps turns into one individual rain cloud or even a thunderstorm. The increased rainfall would not last for days.
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Texas special session called to address flood warning failures and emergency response after Hill Country flooding caused more than 100 deaths.
Some regions in the mid-Atlantic are also facing risks of flooding. On Sunday, Tropical Storm Chantal flooded parts of North Carolina, where more than 10 inches of rain fell near the Chapel Hill area. The Haw River, near Bynum, North Carolina, crested to nearly 22 feet, the highest crest on record there, as a result of those heavy rains.
Flash floods surged through in the middle of the night, but many local officials appeared unaware of the unfolding catastrophe, initially leaving people near the river on their own.