Mountainous West Virginia Leads the Nation In Crippling Flash Floods Risk From Climate Change

[Staph]

3. This article has been written by someone geographically challenged.

West Virginia has never been called the "mountaineer" state; we are the mountain state, and the WVU mascot is the mountaineer.

Despite John Denver's lyrics in Country Roads, the Blue Ridge Mountains barely touch the state, in the far eastern part of the eastern panhandle.

The entire Kanawha River, not just the lower portion, is contained within the state borders.


However, the discussion of flash flooding is absolutely right. In 1985, Hurricane Juan stalled over West Virginia for a day, dropping ten inches of rain and killing 45. Some of those bodies were never found.

I was a bit irked by the next to last paragraph of the article - "Unfortunately, Mountaineers would rather rebuild on a regular basis than burn less coal. The rest of us shouldn’t have to use our taxpayers to rebuild the state over and over and over again." Do you say the same to those in regularly flooded coastal areas or fire-prone sections of California?