US Has Never Had More Flash Flood Warnings

If it feels like you're hearing about a new flash flood warning every day this year, there's good reason: The National Weather Service has issued a record number, reports Axios. The agency put out 3,160 through Wednesday, the most since record-keeping began in the 1980s. Nearly 100 were issued on Monday alone, writes meteorologist Michael Lowry on Substack in dubbing 2025 "the year of the flash flood." (The most devastating, of course, took place earlier this month in Texas.)

The NWS puts out flash flood warnings not if flooding might happen, but only if it is imminent or already has started. The trend syncs with studies suggesting that warmer temperatures on the planet will lead to more intense and frequent storms, per NBC News. The outlet, however, also notes that another factor behind the record number of warnings is that radar technology and weather modeling keep improving. "So naturally you expect more warnings just because our systems are getting better and better," says Amir AghaKouchak of the Center for Hydrometeorology and Remote Sensing at the University of California, Irvine.