The world crossed the threshold into a dangerous new epoch on May 23, 2001, with the Chisolm wildfire in Alberta. The conflagration released such ferocious power in such a short amount of time that its intensity was picked up by American military monitoring. They were convinced that Canada had just detonated a nuclear warhead.

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The phrase we’ve heard again and again about the Texas disaster is that “no one saw it coming.” But even if they had, they would not have believed it.

The Guadalupe River was swamped by a staggering 1.8 trillion gallons of rain. This forced water levels to rise 26 feet in just 45 minutes.

There was no outrunning the flood. There was no climbing onto a second-story roof.

And despite the hopeful but false story that some young girls found sanctuary in a tree, the campers never had a chance. Twenty-six feet of water is the equivalent of an inland tsunami.

This is the new face of climate floods.