Floodgate Report · Checkmate
Does groundwater pressure determine the catastrophic flooding location?
On July 15–16, 2026, reports of water over Goat Creek Road were made at 10:52 p.m., when only 0.04″ of rain had fallen during the past several hours. This investigation uses government data to examine the similarities and differences between the 2025 and 2026 catastrophic Kerr County floods.
The Investigations
Part I
Mockingbird
Did the rain account for the water? — a public-records examination of rainfall, discharge, soil, and the river’s own numbers, step by step.
Enter the investigation →
Part II · Coming Soon
Foundations
The geology and makeup of the Texas Hill Country aquifer formations, their history, and this investigation’s own in-depth study of 60 years of USGS, Texas A&M, and TWDB documentation.
Part III · Coming Soon
Tsunami
The minute-by-minute events that led up to and transpired along the South Fork of the Guadalupe River and downstream July 4, 2025, followed by the behaviors of city officials afterward.
Part IV · The 2026 Storm Ran the Experiment
Checkmate
July 16, 2026 dropped more rain on the same basin, on saturated ground — and made barely 60% of the 2025 flood. Five pages: the ledger, the inversion, the control, the source, and the creek that flooded before the rain.
See the head-to-head →
Live Data & Models
August — The Pressure Watch
Is the South Fork in danger? The wells, read on every visit
The Record
Provenance, preservation, and every revision we watched
Live Conditions
Guadalupe River gauges, Kerr County — live
Lower Trinity Wells
Head above formation top — live tracking
The Mechanism — 3D
The July 4 mechanism, formation by formation
South Fork 2D Model
The flood wave, modeled on 1-m terrain