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.

Camp Mystic's executive director began evacuating campers approximately 45 minutes after the National Weather Service issued a "life-threatening flash flooding" alert.

Plans to develop a flood monitoring system in the Texas county hit hardest by deadly floods were scheduled to begin only a few weeks later.

A large percentage of people still unaccounted for were probably visiting the area, Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said.

For the third straight day, thunderstorms have posed what meteorologists call life-threatening conditions in the Hill Country, where flooding earlier this month killed at least 131 people.

As flooding from the nearby Guadalupe River poured into their home, a Texas family of nine relied on lobster buoys and a pocketknife to cut open a hole in a loft near the top of their house in Hunt.

About four miles downriver from Acevedo's team in Kerrville, Roberto Marquez was found working on a memorial. "I've made 148. But I believe we need to make another 18," Marquez said. The artist is handmaking crosses to honor those lost across Texas.

Forecasters explained that two mesoscale convection vortexes — one near Waco, and one near the Rio Grande — pulled in storm cells and placed them in circling patterns over the same areas, unleashing more dangerous floodwaters.