In what experts call "Flash Flood Alley," the terrain reacts quickly to rainfall steep slopes, rocky ground, and narrow riverbeds leave little time for warning.

This map shows where camps along the Guadalupe River were impacted by the July 4 flood. Meteorologists Pat Cavlin and Kim Castro detail how it all happened.

KERRVILLE, Texas (AP) — Over the last decade, an array of Texas state and local agencies missed opportunities to fund a flood warning system intended to avert a disaster like the one that killed dozens of young campers and scores of others in Kerr County on the Fourth of July.

A Mobile couple visiting their son and his family in Texas are among those still missing. Their daughter-in-law's body was found on Tuesday

With more than 170 still missing, communities must reconcile how to pick up the pieces around a waterway that remains both a wellspring and a looming menace.

Emergency responders kept hope alive as they combed through fallen trees and other debris that littered the hard-hit central Texas communities on the fifth day after devastating floods killed more than 100.

Growing up near the Guadalupe River in Kerrville, Texas, could sometimes feel like living near a volcano. I was born two blocks away from the gorgeous river that flows from the Hill Country to the Gulf of Mexico, just one year before the devastating and deadly 1987 flash flood, often described around town as the “big one.”

Camp Mystic was overrun by flash flooding that started on Independence Day. Rapidly rising waters ripped through the century-old all-girls Christian summer camp, killing at least 27 people. Others are still missing.