Abstract The impactful 04 July 2025 Central Texas extreme rainfall event is examined to understand how surface conditions influence storm development. Utilizing convection‐permitting model simulations, we evaluate the sensitivity of this event to Gulf of Mexico sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTAs) and antecedent soil moisture distributions. The precursor wet soil conditions enhanced storm rainfall, whereas warm coastal and central Gulf SSTAs suppressed rainfall through perturbations of the low‐level circulation, including the Great Plains low‐level jet, which modified moisture transport and moisture convergence. When compared with climatological conditions, SST and soil moisture anomalies produced a rainfall reduction, indicating SST forcing dominated the combined response. These results suggest that this extreme storm would have produced higher rainfall totals had SSTs been closer to their recent climatological average.
Vizy et al. (Sat,) studied this question.