Flash floods can strike without warning — this new technology could change that

<figure> <img alt="Flash flood" data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images" data-has-syndication-rights="1" src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/268746_new_technology_could_change_how_we_predict_flash_floods_for_good_CVirginia.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" /> <figcaption> </figcaption> </figure> <p class="has-drop-cap wp-block-paragraph">On the morning of June 9th, Laura Lin was working from her home in Lanesville, a rural southern Indiana town about 15 miles from the Kentucky border. She was on a Zoom call, unaware that the heavy rain outside was beginning to flood her yard. </p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">"I look over to where the barn is over there, and I see pieces of my wood floating, and I was like, 'What?' And I immediately was like, 'I have to go.' Close my laptop, and I get my kids up, and I'm like, 'Something's wrong,'" Lin recalls.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">Lin and her family got out safely and sheltered at a neighbor's house, but Lanesville got over 8 inches of rain within <a href="https://www.wlky.com/article/lanesville-indiana-corydon-flooding-rain-evacuations/71536533">just a few hours that day</a>, way over <a href="https://glossary.ametsoc.org/wiki/rain/">the thre …</a></p> <p><a href="https://www.theverge.com/science/997083/flash-flood-warning-tacls-satellite-machine-learning">Read the full story at The Verge.</a></p>