(WKYT) – On the night of July 24, 2022, University of Kentucky professor Chris Barton remembers not being able to sleep. He was watching the weather radar on his television.

“And this system came into, you know, over Pine Mountain and into this area, and it almost looked like a freight train. It just kept coming and coming. I kept watching it, and I just knew immediately that this is going to be catastrophic.”

It was terrible. About 16 inches of rain flooded 13 eastern Kentucky counties, killing 45 people and destroying 9,000,000 homes.

Barton is a UK professor of forest hydrology and watershed management. He says what happened in eastern Kentucky is similar to the recent flooding disaster in North Carolina and Tennessee.

Barton says that in both situations, extremely warm temperatures caused evaporation to keep huge amounts of water in the atmosphere.

“What happens is when you have those extreme temperatures, one that you get a lot of evaporation from, either the land surface or the water surface, as far as this year’s event, and it holds up in the atmosphere. And the atmosphere can actually hold more water when it’s warmer. And in both cases the same thing happened. These atmospheric fronts started to lift. And when they hit the mountainous areas of Kentucky and North Carolina this year, the air it cools and all the water is released. And unfortunately the amount of water in these systems is just enormous, and it overwhelms the system.”

To better understand and predict flooding in Appalachia, Barton is the principal investigator of a four-year, $1.1 million project just awarded by the US National Science Foundation. It is a collaboration of researchers and civil engineers from Kentucky universities, including the University of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University and West Virginia University.

Barton says learning how to better predict flooding in the mountains is an important part of the project.

“We have a plan to work with a lot of schools in the area and communities to educate people about the dangers of flooding and how we can predict them, and then actually use technology in those communities to provide better early warning systems to be aware of them. when a flood will occur.”

To collect data on water flow in mountain streams, the researchers will use Robinson Forest. The nearly 15,000-acre forest is located in Breathitt, Perry and Knott counties.

100 years ago a forestry company owner named EO Robinson deeded the land in a trust to Great Britain. For decades, scientists have used Robinson Forest for education and research.

As an example, Barton says since 1972, water quality and flow data have been collected at various streams in the forest. The streams have a small pond called a pond.

“We have a sensor in there that takes a measurement every 15 minutes, and we actually have a transmitter on it that uses a cell tower or uses a cell phone type of technology, and I can, in my office, actually go to that very here pond and see real time stream flow data coming from this site. Also we have been collecting a water quality sample here every week for over 50 years.”

Collecting water data in a controlled area like Robinson Forest, Barton says, will be invaluable in predicting what will happen in the future. He says changes in climate and weather patterns will lead to more flash flooding problems.

“Because the temperature is getting warmer. And as I said, with global warming you get more evaporation and more water in the atmosphere and when it’s warmer it can hold more. We have about 1300 millimeters of rain every year, and we get about 100 millimeters every month .So it’s a good amount of rain and it used to be, every now and then, a small event here, then a few days later, another event. And what we’re seeing now are these really big, high-intensity ones events, followed by dry spells.”

If better ways of predicting floods can be developed, many lives could be saved. Future generations of families living in Appalachia will depend on it.

Barton says, “I mean, there are families that have been in the same place in these bottomlands for many, many generations, and they’ve lived through many floods. They’ve rebuilt. And yes, this is their home. So it is hard to tell somebody they’d probably be better off moving somewhere higher and I think this last flood, we’ve actually seen a lot of people, you know, pull out and move to higher ground.”

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