This is NPR's life kit. I'm Audre Wynne. Being from Houston, I am no stranger to water

on the roads. Neither is Moe's Bouchel. I have been out in the field trying to make

these calls for myself when I'm in the car trying to go report on these natural disasters

and I see this is impossible. I should not try to go over this road.

Moe's is a reporter with member station KUT. According to his reporting, floods kill

more Americans than nearly any other weather hazard with over half of those deaths happening

on roads. Moe says flash floods can be particularly dangerous because the change in water levels

happens fast.

It's not the type of thing where you see the water levels rising on a river slowly kind

of coming up. This is something that happens quickly, dramatically, and it's the type of

thing that people can really get caught in, almost unaware, which is what makes it so dangerous.

In this episode of Life Kit, how to stay safe in flash floods will walk you through why

we're seeing an increase in flood events, what you should keep in your car in the event

of a flood-related emergency, and how to get from point A to point B safely if you have

to drive during heavy rains.

So we know climate change is causing an increase in extreme weather events. How is climate

change impacting flooding specifically?

We're getting more rainfall in shorter amounts of time, more dramatic rain events coming

down. It's not that we're getting necessarily more rain through the year. It's that it's

happening in a more compressed amount of time. What that means is flooding. You talk to

the experts and they say when you combine that with other trends like suburban sprawl,

maybe poorly planned developments, and other things that can come and interfere with the

...