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In [this NHK News Easy
story](https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/k10013206841000/k10013206841000.html#),
the second paragraph describes an online video showing a river suddenly
flooding.

> 初めは、水は静かに流れています。そこに、急に水がたくさん流れてきます。川はすぐに茶色の水でいっぱいになりました。流れる水の力もとても強くなりました。

The tense is constantly changing in this paragraph and I'm not sure why. Oddly
enough, it seems to change from present tense at the chronological BEGINNING
of the narrative, to past tense at the chronological END.

> 初めは、水は静かに流れています。At first, the water is quietly flowing (present tense).
> そこに、急に水がたくさん流れてきます。Then, the water will be flowing a lot (~てきます is future
> tense, according to [this](https://www.wasabi-jpn.com/japanese-
> grammar/helping-verbs/)). 川はすぐに茶色の水でいっぱいになりました。The river immediately became
> full of brown water (past tense). 流れる水の力もとても強くなりました。The force of the flowing
> water also became much stronger (past tense).

Am I interpreting these sentences correctly? How should I interpret the
changes in tense?

そこに question: The second sentence uses そこに like a conjunction, but I can't
find any entry for this そこに in dictionaries; only そこ **で**. Is this そこに to be
interpreted as a conjunction, or literally as そこ ("there") + に ("at / in")? If
the latter, what purpose does it serve by being included here?
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question
particle-に tense reading-comprehension conjunctions
NHK News Easy article: Constant tense changes, and そこに as a conjunction
This is an example of _historical present_ , which is more common in Japanese
than in English. Please see
[this](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/73870/5010) for details. Here,
present tense is used to describe what's happening in the video vividly.
Something like this is especially common in sport news, so I think you can
guess how it feels. It would not have been wrong at all to use the past tense
consistently.

Note that ～てくる is not "future tense". This くる is simply describing the water
is physically coming toward the river/camera. See
[this](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/676/5010).

Regarding そこに, this そこ refers to "the current scene (calm river)", and this に
is a direction/destination marker rather than a simple location marker. Here,
そこに is an adverbial expression that describes something/someone entering the
scene. I don't think this is a conjunction.
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answer