Students' climate model of deadly July 4 Texas flooding suggests sea surface temperatures actually reduced rainfall

Last fall, the 12 students in the Jackson School of Geosciences' GEO 347G "Climate System Modeling" class set out to understand something that hit close to home: What were the climatological factors that made the July 4, 2025, rainstorm in Central Texas so severe?

What they discovered was that the storm—which caused catastrophic flooding that killed at least 139 people—very well could have been worse. ...