Here's what to know about the deadly flooding, the colossal weather system that drove it and ongoing efforts to identify victims.

Over just two hours, the Guadalupe River at Comfort, Texas, rose from hip-height to three stories tall, sending water weighing as much as the Empire State building downstream roughly every minute it remained at its crest. The force of floodwater is often more powerful and surprising than people imagine.

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.

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.

A retired nurse, her son and a family friend say they were lucky to survive last week's flash floods in Texas that killed more than 100 people, including many summer campers.

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.

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As the Guadalupe River swelled from a wall of water heading downstream, sirens blared over the tiny river community of Comfort — a last-ditch warning to get out for those who had missed cellphone alerts and firefighters going street-to-street telling people to get out.

Follow for live updates in the Texas flooding as the death toll rises to 120, as rescue operations start to shift to recovery phase