WASHINGTON—Last month, the town of Dante in Southwest Virginia’s Appalachia region saw about 3.5 inches of rainfall over a couple of hours. The heavy downpour ran off the steep mountainside surrounding the town, and surged upward from nearby Lick Creek.

The normal amount of rainfall for the town in July is about 5 inches, according to the National Weather Service’s office in Morristown, Tennessee. No one died in the flooding that ensued, according to local reports, but 13 people were injured in the town of about 600.

The episode of rainfall leading to flooding is not new for the communities that are struggling to revitalize themselves after the decline of the coal industry. Damage and destruction hit the Virginia towns of Hurley in 2021 and Whitehood in 2022, and then swept across Southw

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