Houston people: I'm excited to say I'm teaching again at Inprint this fall. We'll be practicing writing using each of the five senses. It's a great way to hold yourself accountable to writing weekly in a supportive group. Registration and more info here:

Nick Fang from UT Arlington tells legislators that if they do pay for flood warning systems -- which Sen. Bettencourt earlier today implied they would -- they can't just pay for up-front costs. They need to consider recurring costs. And there will be no one-size-fits-all system.

In contrast to some early comments this morning when local officials questioned if sirens would have helped in this disaster that felt like it came on so fast, Rice flood modeling and warning expert Phil Bedient tells legislators: “During major storm events every minute counts”.

State climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon is telling legislators how the historic rainfall rates that are typically relied on for building and development may be too small. That's because climate change makes extreme rain more likely.

The state legislative hearing on the floods is now onto the meteorology panel. Texas Water Development Board's Carla Guthrie said at one point during the storm *half an inch* of rain was falling *every ten minutes*.

We got answers at a state hearing this morning about what the Kerr County Judge, who is in charge of emergency management, and Kerr County Emergency Management Coordinator were doing in the early morning of July 4 as floods rose. They were asleep.

Leitha confirms that a volunteer fire department chief called at 4:22 a.m. asking for a Code Red -- which is an alert the county can push to subscribers. He said a sargeant approved that a minute later. But the Code Red didn't go out until 5 a.m.

Sheriff Leitha read out a chilling timeline of calls he said two dispatchers received that morning. Water coming over roads. A family on a roof. An RV park needing evacuation. Camp Mystic needing evacuation. Kids screaming in water. Kids who couldn't wait 10 minutes for rescue.

After Kerr County officials kept saying they had no idea about this, Kendall County judge is now walking through the repeated warnings that came from the weather service. He said they knew July 3 of the possibility for flooding. They're downriver but still striking differences.

Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice says the city has been updating its building codes. He said better building standards kept buildings safe in this disaster. Mayor Joe Herring asked for help putting in a flood warning system by next summer. "It will flood again," he said.

Now we have testimony from Kerr County Emergency Management Coordinator Dub Thomas, who said he was also asleep the morning of July 4. He'd been sick the day before, he said, and didn't go to work. His wife woke him up at 5:30 a.m. after someone from the city of Kerrville called.

“I have never seen anything like this before," Leitha said. No mention yet of climate change, which is making heavy rain more likely. And in this event, the rain WAS crazy. You can see in this NOAA map how heavily rain fell on the south fork of the river where Camp Mystic is.

Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said he went to sleep July 3 with no worries. He said they were glad they were getting some rain. He is mirroring the judge's attitude that this took them by surprise.

This is important because Kelly is the person to call for evacuations in Kerr County. He is responsible for emergency response. He said they had no warning of this storm but that is not true. The weather service had a flood watch in place and was issuing flood warnings overnight.

Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said he was out at a lake house before the storm preparing for a family gathering. He said he woke up July 4 to messages from Texas Division of Emergency Management Chief Nim Kidd, County Sheriff Larry Leitha and Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is at the hearing on the floods in Kerr County now. He says Gov. Greg Abbott was out of state that day, so Patrick was serving as acting governor. "That day will haunt me for the rest of my life," Patrick said.

The second state hearing about the floods is now underway in Kerr County. County and city officials are on the schedule to speak. We're going into this with new information about how Kerrville responded. Lots of questions remain about the county's role.

The city of Kerrville released copies of texts and emails that officials sent Friday morning as the flood waters raged. A big thing stood out: Some didn't seem to know the magnitude of the flash flooding killing people upriver and heading toward them.

Under the new budget law, the timeline is much shorter for wind and solar projects to get tax credits. Economists say solar and wind development will slow as a result, and electricity prices will rise -- including in Texas. My latest with @birenbomb:

RT @birenbomb: Texas' abundant resources and deregulated energy market created a solar & wind boom. They're quicker + cheaper to deploy. B….