When the rivers and creeks running through eastern Kentucky jumped their banks and flooded many Appalachian towns for the second time in as many years, Cara Ellis set to work.

One week later, she’s hardly let up. Ellis has spent countless hours helping friends in her hometown of Pikeville evacuate and delivering supplies to people who have lost their homes. “I’ve been here, there, everywhere in the county,” she said. “It’s overwhelming. There’s been a lot of devastation.”

Ellis spoke during a brief moment of rest in the chaos. Her home was spared when storms brought torrential rain to central Appalachia during the weekend of February 15. The water came down so quickly that the Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy River soon inundated houses and a portion of downtown. The torrent prompted more than 100 rescues in Pike County alone and left several neighborhoods and rural communities without running water. The record-setting winter flood, which killed 21 people statewide and two others in West Virginia, was not the first time Ellis has seen a disaster strike, and she fears it won’t be the last.

“We know there’s going to be a next time,” she said.

More than 8 inches of rain doused Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, and Tennessee, soaking already sodden ground. The resulting inundation came less than three years after flooding throughout eastern Kentucky killed more than 40 people and caused hundreds of millions of dollars of damage across 13 counties. Hurricane Helene brought similar inundations to western North Carolina, southern Virginia, and eastern Tennessee just six months ago. The extreme weather fueling these floods will only grow more common as the world warms.

“These unprecedented storms really do represent our new reality,” said Nicolas Pierre Zegre, a forest hydrologist at West Virginia University who studies flood adaptation in the region, regarding how disasters are impacting Appalachian towns. “Acknowledging that things have been changing kind of opens up the door on other conversations, like why are things changing?”

Read the full article about Appalachian towns supporting each other by Katie Myers at Grist.