https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/immense-rains-are-causing-more-flash-flooding-and-experts-say-its-getting-worse/2018/06/24/3970a236-765e-11e8-805c-4b67019fcfe4_story.html?utm_term=.b02ab93717e0



OLD FORT, N.C. — Brian Gentry was certain his 33,000-pound truck would be fine as he headed out into the heavy rains here in the Blue Ridge Mountains. But as he went to clear debris from a two-lane highway after more than a half-foot of rain, rocklike drops pounded the windows, and he heard the earth “crack” around him as the land began to slide.

Mud and uprooted trees slammed his vehicle, tossing it across the highway, over a ­10-foot embankment and into the raging Catawba River. Gentry and a co-worker with the North Carolina Department of Transportation were rolled, and the truck came to rest in the water, just the passenger-side window peaking out.

“I looked around, and I saw everything that was going on, and I thought, ‘I am going to ­­die,’?” Gentry, 47, recalled. “I thought, ‘My life is about over, so I need to call my wife.’?”

Gentry spent 40 minutes clinging to a rope in the water awaiting rescue, the victim of an alarming phenomenon: Torrential rain events across the United States are becoming more frequent and more intense, leading to record rainfall, rare extreme flooding and perilous infrastructure failures.

Experts say the immense rains — some spawned by tropical ocean waters, others by once-routine thunderstorms — are the product of long-rising air temperatures and an increase in the sheer size of the storms. Because warmer air can hold more water, large storms are dropping far more rain at a faster clip.