In the small creekside town of Hindman, waist-deep water turned a main road into a river before dawn, video from Storm Brandon Clement shows. Barbara Wicker was worried about relatives in town, including five grandchildren, because water had surrounded their homes, she told Clement. “I can’t get to them. I can’t get to 911. … There’s no help in sight,” Wicker told Clement early Thursday outside Hindman, a Knott County town about 130 miles by car southeast of Lexington. “This goes a long way — everybody’s stuck,” Hindman resident Kendra Bentley, also standing near a street outside, told Clement of the floodwaters around homes. The rain intensified in the region on Wednesday night after falling in the last few days. In Perry County alone, 8 inches of rain fell in the last 24 hours as of 8 a.m. Another 1 to 3 inches is possible in the area during the day, the weather service said. And more flooding is possible Thursday, especially in parts of eastern Kentucky, southern West Virginia and far southwestern Virginia, the weather service said. Swift-water rescues were reported Thursday in Perry County, Kentucky, including in Chavies, a community of a few hundred people about 30 miles west of Hindman and a 110-mile drive southeast of Lexington, the weather service said. In Jackson’s Breathitt County community, floodwaters rushed past a home in the pre-dawn darkness Thursday, carrying a trash can and other debris with it, video recorded by Deric Lostutter showed. Breathitt County has opened its courthouse as a shelter for flood evacuees, the county’s emergency management agency said on Facebook. “Many roads in the county are covered in water and impassable. Please stay off the road if possible tonight,” the post said. Rescue crews were unable to reach many areas because of “rapid water flow over the roads,” the emergency management agency said.
“Seemingly endless fire hose” of moisture across much of the US
Thursday’s flooding in Kentucky comes two days after record-breaking rainfall caused widespread flash flooding in the St. Louis area. It’s part of a “seemingly endless firehose of moisture from monsoons and the Gulf of Mexico that is producing a conveyor belt of heavy rain and thunderstorms from the Southwest into the central Appalachians,” the Weather Prediction Center said Thursday morning. Recent rainfall, with more to come, makes additional flooding possible in parts of the Ohio and Tennessee valleys and the central Appalachians over the next two days, the forecast center said. A moderate risk — or level 3 out of 4 — of excessive precipitation exists Thursday for parts of Kentucky, West Virginia and northern Tennessee — as well as parts of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, the forecast center said. The climate crisis is supercharged rainfall around the world. The atmosphere can hold more moisture as temperatures rise, and this can lead to higher precipitation rates and make record-breaking rainfall more likely. Scientists are increasingly certain of the role the climate crisis is playing in extreme weather and have warned that these events will become more intense and more dangerous with every fraction of a degree of warming.
