'Mother Nature at its worst': Flash flood death toll climbs to 6 in West Virginia

About an hour to the southeast, heavy rains battered the Marion County community of Fairmont on Sunday, ripping off the outer wall of an apartment building and damaging bridges and roads. No injuries were reported.

Morrisey has declared a state of emergency in both counties. He said at least 60 homes, 25 businesses and an estimated 30 roads were impacted by the floods.

"It's just Mother Nature at its worst," Morrisey said.

In the northern panhandle, vehicles were swept into swollen creeks, some people sought safety in trees and a mobile home caught fire. Morrisey toured the small community of Triadelphia on Sunday.

"That was just pure devastation," he said. "That was brutal."

Emergency officials in Wheeling sought donations, including cleaning supplies and flat shovels for mud removal.

Five of the six people who died were residents of Triadelphia and the other was from Moundsville, authorities said.

Rich Templin, his wife, Michelle, and a family friend, Chuck Ullom, were cleaning out two storage garages Monday across the street from their Triadelphia home. The garages on lower ground along Little Wheeling Creek were nearly destroyed by flash floods. Templin's home is on elevated ground and was not damaged.

Templin was at work when his wife called him. When he did not answer, she texted him to say their street was flooded, a trailer they owned had washed away and that "cars were floating by with people in them."

Templin said he received the text messages within 15 minutes after it started to rain.

"I've talked to numerous people, they said it was like a tsunami. They saw water coming down the road like two or three feet high," he said.

Templin used the garages to store tools used in a trucking service company formerly operated by his father.

"We're trying to see what's salvageable and what's not and just start the rebuilding process," he said.

Most of West Virginia was under a flood watch through Monday night.

A stalled weather system that remained in place over the same location dumped the destructive amount of rainfall.

"It's unbelievable," said Marshall Shepherd, director of the atmospheric sciences program at the University of Georgia.

As the atmosphere warms, it is able to hold higher amounts of water vapor that can be unleashed as rain during storms.

"Where the climate change signal is crystal clear to me is the rain rates," said Shepherd, making note of the 2.5 to 4 inches of rainfall that fell in about a half hour. "That's consistent with a smoking gun that we've seen with climate change in recent decades, that increase in rain intensity."

Rainfall hitting impervious surfaces such as pavement and roads contributed to the flooding. Stormwater management systems were engineered to handle rainstorms of the past, not the sudden downpours juiced by climate change that are now occurring.

"In Fairmont, there is about a 1 in a 100 chance in a given year that 2.5 inches of rain will fall in an hour, so the amount of rainfall that occurred in such a short time is a rare occurrence," said Brian Tang, an atmospheric science professor at University at Albany in New York state.

Tang said the hilly terrain and soils saturated from abnormally wet weather contributed to the flash flooding.

"When looking at the statistics of torrential rain events, there is a clear signal that climate change is loading the dice for heavy rainfall," Tang said.

The region around Wheeling, about an hour's drive southwest of Pittsburgh, has seen its share of flooding.

Saturday's floods occurred 35 years to the day after more than 5 inches (13 centimeters) of rain in less than three hours killed 26 people and destroyed 80 homes in nearby Shadyside, Ohio.

Last year, severe storms washed out about 200 tombstones at a Wheeling cemetery. There were deadly floods in the region in 2017 and 2022. And in 2004, the remnants of Hurricane Ivan sent floodwaters to the tops of lamp posts and trees in Wheeling's park and amphitheater along the Ohio River.