In West Virginia, flooding is the state’s “costliest and most severe natural hazard,” according to a NOAA report.Īs the region warms up, “you’re just getting a ton more water vapor in the atmosphere that reaches the saturation point - it has to come down somewhere,” said Chris Barton, a professor of forest hydrology and watershed management at the University of Kentucky and president of the reforestation nonprofit Green Forests Work. These risks are already substantial in many places. Extreme rainfall events will likely happen more often and grow more intense over time, increasing the region’s flood risks. It’s projected to keep on doing so, especially during the winter and spring. Precipitation, however, is already increasing across much of central Appalachia. But they’re projected to catch up as the planet continues to warm, according to state-level reports from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. In some of its southern regions, including Kentucky, temperatures haven’t warmed as fast in recent decades as they have in other parts of the country. Today, central Appalachia rests in a unique climate zone.
“The built environment is a really big part of the problem and the challenge,” said Nicolas Zégre, director of West Virginia University’s Mountain Hydrology Laboratory, “especially given how the infrastructure is already poorly maintained and inadequate to deal with these kinds of events.” ‘The consequences are catastrophic’ And in some places, experts say, coal mining has left the landscape scarred and more prone to flash floods.Īt the same time, many central Appalachian communities have suffered major economic losses in the wake of the coal industry’s decline, affecting their ability to adapt to a more extreme climate future. The region’s mountainous topography puts communities at higher risk of getting swamped. Climate change is making rainstorms in Appalachia more severe. That’s the result of a unique confluence of factors. But central Appalachia - including Kentucky, but also West Virginia and parts of Ohio and Pennsylvania - is particularly vulnerable to this climate change impact. That’s simple physics: A warmer atmosphere is able to hold more water and dump more rain. Such events are becoming more common across the country as the climate warms. Experts have classified the deluge as a one-in-1,000-year event - or one that only has a 0.1 percent chance of occurring in any given year. The floods are some of the most extreme in the state’s recorded history. More than three dozen people are confirmed dead, with hundreds more missing. CLIMATEWIRE | Severe rainstorms continued to pelt eastern Kentucky early this week, just days after catastrophic floods slammed the region’s mountain communities.
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