Spotty broadband and urban-centric data for forecasting may have contributed to Appalachian flooding disasters

Daily Yonder map by Sarah Melotte from American Community Survey data

Four inches of rain in a single hour, and the rain kept on falling. In July 2022, southeastern Kentucky was hit with devastating floods. As the area struggles toward recovery, people are looking at why some residents weren't warned and what other factors contributed to the losses. "In the days leading up to the storm, the National Weather Service predicted heavy rain and a moderate risk of flooding across a wide swath of eastern Kentucky and West Virginia," report Claire Carlson and Anya Slepyan of The Daily Yonder. "What happened instead was a record-breaking four-day flood event in Eastern Kentucky that killed a confirmed 43 people and destroyed thousands of homes.: The NWS issued repeated alerts, but many say they received no warning.

Terry Thies said she had received no flood warnings before sleeping that night. "Her part of rural Perry County in Eastern Kentucky often gets heavy rain," the Yonder reports. "So early the next morning, when her foot hit the water lapping the bottom of her wooden bed frame, Thies' first thought was that the toilet had overflowed. But as she scanned her bedroom for the water's source, she realized this was something else entirely." Thies said, "I came into the kitchen and opened the door and water was flowing down the lane. . . . Not a soul, not one emergency outlet texted me or alerted me via phone."

Kentucky's severe-weather alert systems seemed inept. "Imprecise weather forecasting and spotty emergency alerts due to limited cellular and internet access in rural Kentucky meant that Thies and many others were wholly unprepared for the historic flood," the Yonder reports. "Efforts to improve these systems are underway, but state officials say expansions to broadband infrastructure will take at least four years to be completed in Kentucky's most rural counties. In a state where flooding is common, these improvements could be the difference between life and death for rural Kentuckians. . . . There's no guarantee they'll come before the next climate change-fueled disaster."

Urban-oriented data used in weather forecasting also contributed to July's events. Carlson and Slepyan write, "Extreme weather is hard to predict in any setting, but rural regions like Eastern Kentucky are at an additional disadvantage due to an urban bias baked into national weather forecasting systems, according to Vijay Tallapragada, the senior scientist at the National Weather Service's Environmental Modeling Center. . . . Forecasting models depend on observational data — information about past and present weather conditions — to predict what will come next. But there's more data available for urban areas than for rural areas." Jerry Brotzge, Kentucky state climatologist, told the Yonder, "For large areas of Appalachia, we just don't know the climatology there as well as, say, Louisville."

For weather predictions to reach residents in remote areas, completion of broadband projects to consumers is an obstacle. Meghan Sandfoss, executive director of the state's newly created Office of Broadband Development, told the Yonder, "A frustration we hear frequently is that all these new locations are being connected and everybody else has to wait. But that's just the federal funding priority, and that's the way we've got to do it."