Two people died in a basement apartment in Richmond and one in a car along a flooded creek June 27.
Brian Neudorff, with the National Weather Service in Louisville, said forecasters try to get severe weather alerts out as soon as they can, but sometimes the water rises too fast.
“There’s a reason why, sadly, when it comes to fatalities, when you're talking about severe weather like this, it's not tornadoes, it's not lightning,” he said. “Those are not the killers, it's flooding.”
Parts of Kentucky were inundated with up to 8 inches of rain in a matter of hours. Officials performed dozens of water rescues June 27, many of those in Madison County.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, densely populated areas are at a high risk for flash floods. Low spots, such as underground parking garages, basements, underpasses and low water crossings, it says, can become death traps.
Forecasters advise remaining weather aware and having multiple ways to get emergency notifications.
Neudorff said flooding is not as embedded in the popular imagination as other weather events.
“It can be deceptive at times, and it can be fast, and until it happens, in or till you've seen it, you may not completely understand, and it may not get the headlines,” he said. “There's never been a movie called 'Flooding,' but there's been movies called 'Twister,' two of them.”
