At least 11 dead and several missing after over a month’s worth of rain falls in hours and floods San Antonio

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At least 11 people are dead and several others are missing after intense flash flooding covered roadways and swept away vehicles in San Antonio, Texas, triggered by heavy rainfall the area has not seen in more than a decade.

The death toll increased Friday afternoon as search and rescue operations continued in two main areas of the city, according to a news release from the San Antonio Fire Department. Authorities did not specify how many people remained unaccounted for, but said the number was decreasing.

Multiple deaths occurred early Thursday morning in northeastern San Antonio, near the city’s Perrin Beitel neighborhood, according to the department. Water rescue calls started just after 5:00 a.m. CDT Thursday for the area, which is near the northeast loop of Interstate 410, Joe Arrington, the department’s public information officer, told CNN.

Fifteen vehicles were swept away, and 10 people were rescued from trees and bushes about one mile from where they entered the water, according to Arrington. Four of the people rescued needed treatment for minor injuries. A search is ongoing for at least two missing people thought to have been swept away in the flooding there, Arrington added.

Crews are also searching an area on the western side of the city, not far from Lackland Air Force Base, according to an earlier news release. The release did not detail the number of victims or missing people in that area.

The Bexar County Medical Examiner has identified three of those killed near Perrin Beitel as Victor Manuel Macias Castro, 28, Matthew Angel Tufono, 51, and Martha De La Torre Rangel, 55, a release from the county, where San Antonio is located, stated.

The fire department has responded to at least 70 water rescues in the city since early Thursday morning, according to Arrington.

“While the majority of the water rescue responses were not severe in nature and consisted of our crews assisting drivers from vehicles that were stalled in high water, several of these calls were harrowing and involved our crews entering swift-moving water to effect rescues,” Arrington said Thursday evening.

The San Antonio River rose extremely quickly in the vicinity of the deadly flooding in the Perrin Beitel area Thursday. Water levels went from about 3 feet to just over 25 feet in just two hours beginning at around 5 a.m. CDT—a rate comparable to flooding from tropical systems.

San Antonio received 5.6 inches of rain in just three hours shortly after midnight — nearly 4 inches of that rain fell in a single hour.

The city typically records just over 3 inches of rain in all of June, so more than a month’s worth of rain fell in just 60 minutes. That hour-long deluge represents between a 1-in-50 and 1-in-100 year rainfall event – meaning it only has about a 1 to 2% chance of occurring in any year.

Thursday was San Antonio’s second-wettest June day on record and the seventh-wettest single day since 1942, with just over 6 inches of rain. April 25, 2013, is the only day in recent memory that saw more: nearly 10 inches.

Farther east, in Victoria, Texas, authorities responded to around 25 calls of motorists stranded by flash flooding, county Emergency Management Coordinator Rick McBrayer told CNN Thursday.

No injuries have been reported in Victoria. Floodwater is starting to recede on roadways, but river flooding was an ongoing concern, McBrayer said, urging residents to “stay where you’re at through the duration of this event.”

A world warming due to fossil fuel pollution is tipping the scales toward more heavy rainfall events like this. Hourly rainfall rates have intensified in nearly 90% of large US cities since 1970, a recent study found.

A warmer atmosphere as a result of climate change is capable of soaking up more moisture like a sponge and wringing it out in the form of gushing rainfall, which can easily create dangerous or deadly flooding.

Heavy rain came to an end by Thursday evening for much of Texas, but some flood threats will persist into the weekend as area waterways swell.

Multiple rivers from south of San Antonio and east to the Gulf reached minor or moderate flood stage Thursday night and some – including the San Antonio, San Bernard and Guadalupe rivers – will take until the weekend to recede back to normal levels.