By TAMMY WEBBER

It’s not just Texas and North Carolina. Intense rain is falling more frequently in many areas of the U.S. — though where it occurs and whether it causes catastrophic flooding is largely a matter of chance, according to experts.

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More than 100 people died in Texas Hill Country over the weekend after 12 inches of rain fell in just hours. The deluge was driven by warm, moist air left over from Tropical Storm Barry and Hurricane Flossie that created conditions for repeated thunderstorms in the same location, said Texas Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon.

Last year, Hurricane Helene dumped more than 30 inches of rain on western North Carolina, triggering catastrophic flooding that washed away roads and homes, killing more than 100 people in that state alone. This week, flooding from the remnants of Tropical Storm Chantal prompted dozens of water rescues in other parts of North Carolina. And this spring, record rainfall in Kentucky caused severe and deadly flooding.

Although it can be difficult to attribute a single weather event to climate change — and hilly or mountainous terrain worsen flooding — experts say a warming atmosphere and oceans due to the burning of fossil fuels make catastrophic storms more likely.

That’s because the atmosphere can hold 7% more water for every degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit), creating a giant sponge of sorts that sucks up moisture from bodies of water and vegetation. The moisture later falls back to earth in increasingly intense, unpredictable and destructive downpours.

“It’s just loading the dice toward heavy rainfall when the situation is right,” said Kenneth Kunkel, a climate scientist at North Carolina State University.

Intensifying rain storms

Going back through U.S. weather station records dating to 1955, Kunkel found that rain over the past 20 years has become more intense in the eastern two-thirds of the country, including the southern Great Plains, where Texas is located. Intensities have remained the same or declined in the West and southwest.

At the 700 stations that began collecting data in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the highest proportion of two-day rainfall records have been set in just the past 10 years, Kunkel said, though that doesn’t fully reflect most Western stations, which were established later.

Nielsen-Gammon said the overall intensity of extreme rainfall in Texas has increased by 15% over the past 40-50 years.

Still, it’s almost impossible to predict where the most catastrophic rain will fall in any given year, Kunkel said.

“This month was the Texas Hill Country’s turn to get hit. Last fall … in western North Carolina, it was our turn,” Kunkel said, adding that just because an area was spared over the past 20 or 30 years, it “doesn’t mean that they aren’t vulnerable. … They got lucky.”

A ‘perfect storm’ in Texas

The worst flooding and greatest loss of life in Texas occurred in Kerr County, in an area known as “flash flood alley” because of its steep terrain that funnels water to the Guadalupe River, a popular recreational area.

Though the county did not get the most rain from the storms, the “distribution of rainfall was one of the worst possible patterns” because the most intense downpours were over the headwaters of the south fork of the Guadalupe River, causing water to rush into areas where hundreds of people, including children, were camping, said Nielsen-Gammon.

If the epicenter had been 10 miles north or south, the rain would have been divided among different river basins, he said. If it had been farther downstream, larger floodplains would have absorbed and slowed much of the water.

Years of drought also likely exacerbated the flooding.

Kerr County, for example, had been in extreme or exceptional drought for more than three years, aside from one four-week period last fall. That likely left the soil compacted, which caused water to run off instead of soaking into the ground, said Brad Rippey, a U.S. Department of Agriculture meteorologist.

Then, air from the warmer-than-normal Gulf of Mexico — a reflection of global warming — blew into the state with a higher water content than it would have had decades ago.

It all added up to “just a perfect storm of events” that caused a catastrophe, said Rippey. “There are things that had to come together to make this happen.”

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

By TIFFANY STANLEY and LINLEY SANDERS

WASHINGTON (AP) — While the Trump administration explores ways to encourage Americans to have more babies and reverse the United States’ falling birth rate, a new poll finds that relatively few U.S. adults see this as a priority or share the White House’s concerns.

Instead, Americans are more likely to want the government to focus on the high cost of child care and improving health outcomes for pregnant women, according to the survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Pronatalism, or the promotion of childbearing, has gained traction as a movement within the tech world and among some religious conservatives. Prominent figures on the right like Elon Musk and Vice President JD Vance have espoused pronatalist beliefs, arguing more children are good for society.

The survey finds that only about 3 in 10 Americans say declining birth rates are a “major problem” in the U.S., and just 12% say that encouraging families to have more children should be “a high priority” for the federal government.

Republicans also see affordable child care and health outcomes for pregnant women as higher government priorities than promoting more births, indicating that even as conservatives push pronatalist policies, they’re not getting much buy-in from the GOP base.

“In this day and age, it’s not dire,” said Misty Conklin, a supporter of President Donald Trump, of the declining birth rate.

Conklin, 50, lives in Indiana and thinks the government should prioritize making it more affordable to raise children, including supporting the social services her disabled granddaughter needs.

“It’s hard to live as just a couple, let alone with children,” Conklin said. “It’s getting worse and worse.”

Child care costs are a much bigger concern

Americans are more concerned about the cost of raising and caring for a child than the number of babies being born, the survey found.

About three-quarters of U.S. adults say the cost of child care is a “major problem.” That includes about 8 in 10 Democrats and women, as well as roughly 7 in 10 Republicans and men.

Policies like free or low-cost daycare for children who are too young to attend public school and paid family leave are also popular with about two-thirds of Americans.

For Maria Appelbe, a Trump voter in Arizona, child care costs factored into her decision to quit her job to care for her daughter when she was younger. The 49-year-old said, “I was lucky enough that back in those days without inflation, we were able to make it work.”

Not many US adults are worried too few children being born

Americans seem to have few opinions about the number of children families should have. Demographic projections have indicated the country’s replacement rate is 2.1 children per woman, which would keep the population from shrinking over the long term. However, in the survey, there aren’t strong opinions about whether it’s “mostly a good thing” or “mostly a bad thing” for families to have fewer than two children or more than two.

Appelbe, who has one teenager, thinks financially it makes sense to have small families. “I’m so glad that I was able to give her everything that I could, but I definitely think if I had more children, I wouldn’t have been able to,” she said.

While few Americans say the federal government should make it a “high priority” to encourage families to have more children, a majority, 55%, do want the government to focus on improving health outcomes for women. Black adults are especially likely to say this, as are women. Black women have the highest maternal mortality rate in the United States, which lags behind other wealthy nations in maternal health.

Pronatalism ideas register more with conservatives, but most aren’t thinking about it

There are small signs that some pronatalist policies are registering more with conservative Republicans than liberal Democrats, even though the poll indicates most aren’t thinking about this issue.

Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say it’s “mostly bad” for the future of the U.S. if families have two or fewer children, although relatively few Republicans — about 2 in 10 — hold this view.

A social conservative and fiscal liberal, Dmitriy Samusenko, 28, does not identify with either major U.S. political party. The California resident does think the declining U.S. birth rate is a major problem that will determine if the nation “will continue to exist in the long run.”

Samusenko said he supports “using the government as a resource to enable families to grow and develop.”

Pronatalist advocates have pitched the White House on the idea of a $5,000 “baby bonus” to mothers after a new baby is born. Trump has said it “sounds like a good idea,” but about half of conservative Republicans oppose the $5,000 baby bonus, and about one-quarter support it. Americans overall are more split: about one-third are in favor, about 4 in 10 are opposed, and about 3 in 10 are neutral.

Many see the cost of fertility treatments as a major problem

On the campaign trail, Trump promised to be the “fertilization president.” In February, he signed an executive order supporting expanded access to in vitro fertilization.

IVF is popular among Americans but controversial among parts of Trump’s religious base, notably Catholics and some evangelicals.

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About 4 in 10 U.S. adults consider “the cost of fertility treatments” to be a major problem in the United States. Nearly half of U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favor requiring insurance companies to cover fertility treatments.

Bill Taylor, 72, of Washington state, watched his adult daughter face health challenges and expensive fertility treatments to have a child. He strongly favors the government requiring insurance companies to cover fertility treatments.

Taylor, a Democrat, also said the declining birth rate is a problem, though a minor one.

“Bigger families mean a greater need for government health care and government social programs,” Taylor said. “Conservatives don’t want to do that. They just want to grow the family.”

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

The AP-NORC poll of 1,158 adults was conducted June 5-9, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

SILVER BAY — A 25-year-old Kansas man drowned while swimming in a North Shore river on the Fourth of July.

Just before 1 p.m. July 4, the Lake County Sheriff’s Office said it responded to a report of a man who had been underwater for 10 minutes at Illgen Falls, a waterfall along the Baptism River in Tettegouche State Park. People often swim at the base of the 40-foot waterfall.

In a Facebook post Monday, the sheriff’s office said Hari Kiran Gowd Senagana, 25, of Overland Park, Kansas, was swimming with a group when he began to struggle.

“One party from the group saw the victim struggling in the water but was not able to help them due to the depth of the water,” the sheriff’s office said.

Responding deputies requested help from the St. Louis County Rescue Squad’s remotely operated vehicle team, which located and recovered the victim in 32 feet of water, the sheriff’s office said.

The Midwest Medical Examiner’s Office preliminarily ruled the death an accidental drowning, the sheriff’s office said.

According to a GoFundMe page set up by his friends, Senagana was born and raised in the “small, underprivileged village” of Chikkala in India. He was the first in his family to study internationally, and was finishing a master’s degree at the University of Central Missouri, the GoFundMe page said.

“What was meant to be a day of nature and relaxation turned into an unimaginable tragedy,” friends wrote on GoFundMe. “A sudden surge of water at Illgen Falls swept him away. Despite the best efforts of rescue teams, Hari couldn’t make it out. His body was recovered after an intense three-hour search.”

The money from the GoFundMe page, which had raised more than $50,000 of its $65,000 goal as of Monday evening, would help cover the cost of transporting his remains to India, funeral and memorial expenses, support for his family, and repayment of his student loan.

In May 2024, the body of a 31-year-old Finland, Minnesota, man was recovered from the Baptism River. His clothes and wallet were found at the base of Illgen Falls.

In 2003, a 24-year-old Rushmore, Minnesota, man drowned while swimming at the mouth of the Baptism River.

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