A Looming Disaster: New Data Reveal Where Flood Damage Is An Existential Threat at 9:02 pm NPR Pastor Aaron Trigg was at home when the water arrived in Rainelle. It had been raining hard all day, filling the creeks and rivers that run through southern West Virginia. In the past, such intense downpours would only last a few hours. But this storm brought wave after wave of torrential rain. "You could hear the water up in the mountains just crashing trees," Trigg remembers. Rainelle is a small town in a steep valley. When the creek near downtown jumped its banks on the evening of June 23, 2016, the water immediately flooded into every home on Trigg's block.