{"id":26658,"date":"2025-07-21T18:02:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-21T18:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/26658\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T18:02:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T18:02:12","slug":"the-surprising-reasons-floods-and-other-disasters-are-deadlier-at-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/26658\/","title":{"rendered":"The surprising reasons floods and other disasters are deadlier at night"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

It was 4 a.m. on July 4 at Camp La Junta in Kerr County when Kolton Taylor woke up to the sound of screaming. The 12-year-old boy stepped out of bed and straight into knee-deep floodwaters<\/a> from the nearby Guadalupe River. Before long, the water had already risen to his waist. In the darkness, he managed to feel for his tennis shoes floating nearby, put them on, and escape to the safety of the hillside. All 400 people at the all-boys camp survived, even as they watched one of their cabins<\/a> float away in the rushing river. But 5 miles downriver at Camp Mystic, 28 campers and counselors<\/a> were killed.<\/p>\n

The flash flooding in Texas would have been catastrophic at any time of day, but it was especially dangerous because it happened at night. Research shows that more than half of deaths from floods<\/a> happen after dark, and in the case of flash floods, one study put the number closer to three-quarters. Other hazards are more perilous in the dark, too: Tornadoes that strike between sunset and sunrise are twice as deadly<\/a>, on average, as those during the day. No one can stop the sun from rising and setting, but experts say there are simple precautions that can save lives when extreme weather strikes at night. As climate change supercharges floods, hurricanes, and fires, it\u2019s becoming even more important to account for the added risks of nocturnal disasters.<\/p>\n

Stephen Strader, a hazards geographer at Villanova University, said that at night, it\u2019s not enough to rely on a phone call from a family member or outdoor warning sirens (which Kerr County officials discussed installing<\/a>, but never did). The safest bet is a NOAA radio<\/a>, a device that broadcasts official warnings<\/a> from the nearest National Weather Service office 24\/7. One major advantage is that it doesn\u2019t rely on cell service.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s old school technology, but it\u2019s the thing that will wake you up and get you up at 3 a.m.,\u201d said Walker Ashley, an atmospheric scientist and disaster geographer at Northern Illinois University.<\/p>\n

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Even with warning, reacting in the middle of the night isn\u2019t easy. When people are shaken awake, they\u2019re often disoriented, requiring additional time to figure out what\u2019s happening before they can jump into action. \u201cThose precious minutes and seconds are critical a lot of times in these situations for getting to safety,\u201d Strader said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The darkness itself presents another issue. People tend to look outside for proof that weather warnings match up with their reality, but at night, they often can\u2019t find the confirmation they\u2019re looking for until it\u2019s too late. Some drive their cars into floodwaters, unable to see how deep it is, and get swept away. It\u2019s also harder to evacuate \u2014 and try to rescue people \u2014 when you can barely see anything. \u201cI invite anybody to just go walk around the woods with a flashlight off, and you find out how difficult it can be,\u201d Ashley said. \u201cImagine trying to navigate floodwaters or trying to find shelter while you\u2019re in rushing water at night with no flashlight. It\u2019s a nightmare.\u201d<\/p>\n

The logic applies to most hazards, but the night problem appears the worst with sudden-onset disasters like tornadoes and earthquakes<\/a> \u2014 and the early-morning flash floods in Texas, where the Guadalupe rose 26 feet in 45 minutes. A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, meaning that storms can dump more water<\/a> more suddenly than they used to.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have essentially, because of climate change, put the atmosphere on steroids,\u201d Strader said. It\u2019s on his to-do list to study whether other disasters, like hurricanes and wildfires, are deadlier at night.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When Hurricane Harvey pummeled Texas with rain for days in 2017, people described waking up to water creeping into their homes<\/a>; the Texas National Guard navigated rescue boats<\/a> through neighborhoods in the dark, searching for survivors. In recent years, hurricanes have rapidly intensified<\/a> before making landfall, fueled by warmer ocean waters. That shrinks the window in which forecasters can warn people a strong storm is coming. To compound the problem, at the end of July, the Pentagon plans to stop sharing the government satellite microwave data<\/a> that helps forecasters track hurricanes overnight, leaving the country vulnerable to what\u2019s called a \u201csunrise surprise.\u201d<\/p>\n

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In the past, nighttime conditions have proved useful for slowing wildfires: Temperatures are cooler and the air has more moisture, reducing the likelihood of fires spreading quickly. But climate change is lessening these beneficial effects. The overall intensity of nighttime fires rose 7 percent worldwide between 2003 and 2020, according to a study in the journal Nature<\/a>. That means fires are increasingly spreading late at night and early in the morning<\/a>. It was an ultra-dry January night<\/a> when the Eaton Fire began tearing through Altadena in Los Angeles County. Some residents were woken up in the predawn hours to smoke already in their homes, strangers pounding on their windows<\/a>, or sheriff\u2019s deputies and rescue volunteers driving by with loudspeakers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While daytime tornado deaths have declined over time, nighttime fatalities are on the rise, Strader and Ashley have found in their research<\/a>. (It\u2019s still unclear<\/a> as to how climate change affects tornadoes.) They found that tornadoes that touch down at night are statistically more likely to hit someone, simply because there are more potential targets scattered across the landscape. During the day, people are often concentrated in cities and sturdy office buildings versus homes, which may be manufactured and not as structurally resilient to floods or high winds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Night adds dimensions of danger to many types of disasters, but the darkness isn\u2019t the only factor at play \u2014 and it doesn\u2019t have to be as deadly, Ashley said, stressing the importance of getting a weather radio and making a plan in case the worst happens. \u201cHave multiple ways to get information, and your odds of survival are extremely high, even in the most horrific tornado situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grist has\u00a0a comprehensive guide<\/a>\u00a0to help you stay ready and informed before, during, and after a disaster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was 4 a.m. on July 4 at Camp La Junta in Kerr County when Kolton Taylor woke…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26659,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,6956,6382,79,6383],"class_list":{"0":"post-26658","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-extreme-weather","10":"tag-news-analysis","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-yahoo"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}