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Travis County Flood Watch Runs Through Mid-July Alongside Austin Cooling Center Openings
City of Austin emergency page logs hundreds of thousands of views while listing active alerts for heavy rain risks and summer heat relief sites.
How we reported this
The National Weather Service placed Travis County under a flood watch that began at 9:00 PM on July 13 and continues until 7:00 PM on July 16. The same alert covers Hays County and Williamson County, with forecasters pointing to the chance of flash flooding from expected heavy rains.
Residents in Austin need current details on road conditions and shelter options because the watch period overlaps with ongoing summer heat. City facilities already activated for cooling add another layer of daily planning for people without reliable air conditioning at home.
Austin Public Library branches and Austin Parks and Recreation Department sites function as cooling centers during their regular hours. Service animals are allowed inside all listed city buildings. CapMetro provides free rides to these locations during excessive heat warnings when riders tell the operator their destination upon boarding.
Page activity and listed sites
The Active Emergency Information Hub on the city website recorded 678,476 views as of the most recent count published June 18. The same page maps specific cooling locations that include Parque Zaragoza Recreation Center, Pan Am Recreation Center, and Alamo Recreation Center, along with an Asian American Resource Center entry. Users can expand the map to check operating hours before travel.
City instructions direct residents to ATXfloods.com for real-time roadway closure updates and to atxfloodsafety.com for safety steps. The hub also links to ReadyCentralTexas.org for heat preparation guidance and to the Open Now resource map at opennow.maps.austintexas.gov for locating water fountains, daytime cooling spots, and nutrition services.
Next steps for Austin households
People should avoid driving through any flooded roadway and instead turn around. The hub page supplies translations of the alerts in more than a dozen languages plus an American Sign Language version hosted on an external viewer. Checking the page or local broadcast updates remains the quickest way to confirm whether conditions change before the watch ends on July 16.
Anyone seeking nearby services can open the city map tool directly or call individual library and park locations listed there to verify current status before heading out.