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Climate data show the past is no longer a good predictor when it comes to preparing for severe weather in Appalachia
By: David Forster
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ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) — July delivered close to 9 inches of rainfall in the Athens area, well above the normal amount in years past.
But does it make sense to talk about normal and use past weather patterns to help predict — and prepare for — the future?
What the evidence suggests is the weather in central Appalachia is getting more severe, particularly when it comes to rainfall and the risks of flooding, said Natalie Kruse Daniels, director of the environmental studies program at Ohio University’s Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Service.
And for a number of reasons, southeast Ohio may find it particularly challenging to address these risks, Kruse Daniels noted during a presentation Wednesday as part of the university’s Science Cafe series.
Storm management systems are typically designed based on historical data that show how much rainfall an area is likely to get at any given time. This is often expressed as a flood risk. For example, based on the data, a community might expect a certain level of flooding once every 100 years.
But this historical data is rapidly becoming outdated as central Appalachia and other parts of the country are getting wetter, Kruse Daniels said. This above-average rainfall is putting a higher percentage of properties in southeast Ohio at higher risk for flooding.
In many parts of central Appalachia, including southeast Ohio, what used to be considered once in a 100 years floods are becoming more like once every 50, 40 or 30 years, or even more frequent based on recent weather trends, Kruse Daniels said.
In other words, the region can expect more severe flooding more often, overwhelming roads, bridges and storm management systems that were designed for a different era.
So the past is no longer as good a predictor of future storms and flood risks, Kruse Daniels said. This makes it more challenging for communities to plan and prepare, and this is especially true for much of southeast Ohio.
Some of the particular challenges for southeast Ohio include many isolated communities, making it more difficult to provide relief to these places during a flood or other natural disaster.
Another is that many settlements in southeast Ohio are built on floodplains, which are prone to flooding. And on top of this, many communities in the region do not have zoning or building codes, which means they may lack adequate infrastructure for strom drainage even for historical average rainfall.
Communities in Appalachia can pool resources to build resilience
Many communities in southeast Ohio are also economically distressed, which compounds the challenges of preparing for more extreme weather, Kruse Daniels said.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, better known as FEMA, rates communities based on their capacity to cope with natural disasters. This Community Resilience Challenges Index factors in such things as access to transportation, incomes levels, percentage of older adults, percentage of people with chronic illnesses, and access to healthcare and education and other resources, Kruse Daniels said.
Much of central Appalachia, including southeast Ohio, is considered to have a high degree of challenges relative to other communities. To put it another way, the region has high barriers to being resilient, Kruse Daniels said.
“If you can’t make ends meet, if you don’t have access to healthcare, if you don’t have access to quality education, if you don’t have a car or reliable transportation to a job, if you don’t have childcare, if you don’t have broadband or some way to communicate, then resilience is going to be back of mind,” she said.
But there are things people can do at the community level to build more resilience despite the challenges and limitations. This includes people reaching out to their neighbors and talking about disaster planning and what resources they can contribute as part of a community response, Kruse Daniels said.
“One of the biggest predictors of how we’re going to make it through a disaster are our social connections,” she said.
Communities also can designate resilience hubs, which are places people know they can go in a flood or other disaster to find food, water, shelter, medical supplies and other emergency supplies.
Communities also can start doing more proactive storm management, Kruse Daniels said. The traditional approach has been to capture rainwater through storm drains and quickly move it to a stream or river. This requires a lot of underground infrastructure that communities may lack and is costly to install.
A newer approach is to create more green spaces at the surface, such as built-in planters along streets, that can capture and absorb rainfall and then let it slowly drain away.