Following the deadly flooding that occurred in central Texas in July 2025, people took to social media to share clips of the disaster and its aftermath. Nearly two weeks later, a video made up of clips purportedly from the floods got 1.5 million views on X (archived) and 97,000 likes on Instagram (archived).
Text in the video says the footage is from Texas and dates it to July 13, 2025. Another line of text reads, "No sirens. No alerts. Just silence… then chaos." The video includes clips from what appear to be eight different locations, each one flooded by rapidly rising water from a nearby river. All of the clips are from the air, as if recorded by a drone or from a tower.
Not only is the text within the video incorrect — the worst of the flooding occurred on July 4, and there were alerts ahead of the flooding — but the clips do not show real footage from the floods. They are most likely AI-generated. Because of this, we've rated this claim fake.
First, let's establish the location in which the flood occurred.
The worst of the flooding was in Kerr County, Texas, around the Guadalupe River, where news sources report most of the disaster's deaths occurred. The bulk of Kerr County's communities are along the Guadalupe River, between Hunt, where the north and south forks of the Guadalupe meet, and Comfort. Kerrville is the area's largest town. While the areas around the river's forks aren't heavily populated, several camps are located on either fork's banks.
NOAA's river gauges recorded major flooding at or near records in Hunt, Kerrville and Comfort. Those gauges recorded their peak crests at around 6:00 a.m., 8 a.m. and 12 p.m., respectively.
There are real videos of the rising Guadalupe River recorded by people within that area at those times.
On the morning of July 4, one person posted a video to Facebook that he said was from Lane Valley Road, which is near Center Point, around 8 a.m. Google's Street View of the bridge on Lane Valley Road shows the same bend in the Guadalupe River the water comes rushing in from in that video.
Another video posted to YouTube by a local news station appears to have been recorded from the San Antonio Street bridge, also in Center Point. Once again, that location can be confirmed by going to Google Street View and looking for the bend in the river that appears in the video.
The video of the eight flood clips posted to X looks very different from these videos, both in the locale and the behavior of the river. None of the towns in those clips look like the communities in the area. Even the largest town in the county, Kerrville, still appears smaller than the first few towns of the X video.
The Guadalupe River is a relatively narrow river, particularly while it runs through Kerr County. Many of the rivers in the X clip are too wide to be the Guadalupe.
There is also a glaring omission within the waters of every single clip in the X video: the debris prevalent in flash flooding. A mass of debris follows immediately after the rising tide of water in the video of Lane Valley Road posted to Facebook, and massive amounts of debris can be seen about three minutes into the YouTube video taken from the San Antonio Street bridge. There's even a house among the debris carried along the flooding river at one point in the latter video.
The video from the San Antonio Street bridge is particularly helpful in understanding what the flooding in Kerr County was like. The video is about 35 minutes long, recording consistently from seconds before the flooding starts, when the riverbed was mostly dry, all the way to the point the water begins rising over the bridge. While the water crashes against surfaces like an oceanic wave against a rock during a storm in many of the clips within the X video, the water rises more steadily in the video from the San Antonio Street bridge. Rather than crashing into the bridge once it's high enough, the water simply starts flowing over the bridge without any dramatic waves.
Inconsistencies and errors within the X video suggest its clips are likely AI-generated. The most obvious red flag is the unrealistic behavior of pedestrians and drivers within the video, as many don't react even when the water is visibly rushing toward them or even when it starts submerging them. Additionally, some of the cars and buildings have unusual shapes that don't make sense. A pedestrian appears to fade out of existence and back into existence about 18 seconds into the video.
A watermark in the bottom right corner of the video suggests it was first posted by the TikTok account spoookyydoo. The video doesn't appear on their profile, but the account posts very similar videos in which "Texas" and a mid-July date appear over flood clips.
Snopes reached out to the user via a public comment, as their account did not enable private messages from people they do not follow, and will update this story if we learn more information.