The extreme rainfall and flash flooding that killed at least 37 people in Eastern Kentucky this week, washing away houses and cars and turning streets into raging rivers.
, washing away houses and cars and turning streets into raging rivers, is one more example of how climate change is poised to overwhelm infrastructure across the United States in the years to come.
“Nobody’s immune. I think Kentucky shows us that. It doesn’t matter if you’re in an urban area like Nashville or if you’re in rural Appalachia," Camp said, adding,"We’re seeing more of these intense precipitation events, where there’s a lot of water dumped on an area in a short amount of time. And the infrastructure wasn’t designed to handle that amount of precipitation."
Climate scientists have shown that for every degree Celsius of warming, the Earth's atmosphere holds 7% more moisture. When conditions are right, that moisture can unload in the form of extreme precipitation events like the ones that dumped 12 inches of rain in Eastern Kentucky last week and another foot of rain days later in Illinois. In fact,hit the nation's midsection in a matter of days this past week.
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