When the Blanco Rose

On the night of 23 May 2015 the Blanco River at Wimberley rose higher than it ever had on record. Up to thirteen inches of rain fell in four to six hours on the river's headwaters in southern Blanco and northeast Kendall counties. The gauge at the Ranch Road 12 bridge read about five feet at nine in the evening. Between 10:45 and 11:45 it climbed five feet every fifteen minutes, going from below flood stage to major flood stage in forty-five minutes, and at 11:24 the National Weather Service issued a flash flood emergency for Wimberley. The gauge itself stopped reporting at forty feet. The United States Geological Survey later put the crest at 44.9 feet and the peak flow at 175,000 cubic feet per second, the largest in the station's record by a wide margin. The previous record, in May 1929, had carried 113,000. This time the water came down the narrow valley in the dark, on a holiday weekend. About 350 homes along the river were destroyed. One house on the river, holding nine people from two families from Corpus Christi, was lifted off its foundation and carried away, and one man survived. More than ten people died in the Wimberley area. Within two weeks the valley's volunteer radio station, KWVH, was on the air under an emergency permit from the Federal Communications Commission. Five months later, on 30 October 2015, the Blanco flooded Wimberley again, peaking at 71,000 cubic feet per second.