'Mother Nature at its worst': Flash flood death toll climbs to 6 in West Virginia

WHEELING, W.Va. (AP) — The death toll from weekend flooding in West Virginia rose to six as residents tried to clean up with the threat of more rain on the way.

At least two people remained missing in the state's northern panhandle after torrential downpours Saturday night, Gov. Patrick Morrisey said Monday. As much as 4 inches (10 centimeters) of rain fell in parts of Wheeling and Ohio County within 40 minutes. The dead included a 3-year-old child.

About an hour to the southeast, heavy rains battered the Marion County community of Fairmont on Sunday, ripping off the outer wall of an apartment building and damaging bridges and roads. No injuries were reported there.

Morrisey declared a state of emergency in both counties. At least 60 homes, 25 businesses and an estimated 30 roads were impacted by flooding, he said.

"It’s just Mother Nature at its worst," Morrisey said.

In the northern panhandle, vehicles were swept into swollen creeks, some people sought safety in trees and a mobile home caught fire. On Sunday, Morrisey toured the small community of Triadelphia, where five died.

“That was just pure devastation,” he said. “That was brutal.”

Emergency officials in Wheeling sought cleaning supplies, shovels for mud removal and other donations.

Rich Templin, his wife Michelle and a family friend were cleaning out two storage garages Monday across the street from their Triadelphia home. The garages situated along ground by Little Wheeling Creek were nearly destroyed by floodwaters. Templin’s home on higher ground was untouched.

Templin was at work when his wife trying calling and then texted him to say their street was flooded, a trailer they owned had washed away and “cars were floating by with people in them.”

Templin said he received the text messages within 15 minutes after the rain began.

“I’ve talked to numerous people, they said it was like a tsunami. They saw water coming down the road like two or three feet high,” he said.

Templin used the garages to store tools used in a trucking service company formerly operated by his father.

“We’re trying to see what’s salvageable and what’s not and just start the rebuilding process,” he said.

Teena Libe moved her truck to higher ground during the storm, but couldn't leave her driveway because a bridge connecting her to the road was severely damaged. Her landlord brought her a generator after she lost electric and water service at her Triadelphia residence.

“The whole entire area within 30 seconds was just underwater,” she said. “It’s just a really surreal feeling and shocking how just within minutes it was just complete disaster."

Libe said she was grateful that the neighborhood's homes were still standing.

“It just really solidifies the power of nature and how quick your life can just be turned upside down,” she said.

A stalled weather system that remained over the same location dumped the destructive amount of rainfall.

“It’s unbelievable,” said Marshall Shepherd, director of the atmospheric sciences program at the University of Georgia.

As the atmosphere warms, it is able to hold higher amounts of water vapor that can be unleashed as rain during storms.

“Where the climate change signal is crystal clear to me is the rain rates,” said Shepherd, noting that 2.5 to 4 inches of rainfall fell in about a half hour. “That’s consistent with a smoking gun that we’ve seen with climate change in recent decades, that increase in rain intensity.”

Rainfall hitting impervious surfaces like roads contributed to the flooding and stormwater management systems were engineered to handle rainstorms of the past, not the sudden downpours juiced by climate change that are now occurring, Shepherd said.

"In Fairmont, there is about a 1 in a 100 chance in a given year that 2.5 inches of rain will fall in an hour, so the amount of rainfall that occurred in such a short time is a rare occurrence,” said Brian Tang, an atmospheric science professor at the University at Albany in New York state.

Tang said hilly terrain and soils already saturated from abnormally wet weather contributed to the flash flooding.

“When looking at the statistics of torrential rain events, there is a clear signal that climate change is loading the dice for heavy rainfall,” Tang said.

The region around Wheeling, about an hour's drive southwest of Pittsburgh, has seen its share of flooding.

Saturday’s flooding came 35 years to the day after more than 5 inches (13 centimeters) of rain in less than three hours and killed 26 people and destroyed 80 homes in nearby Shadyside, Ohio.

Last year, severe storms washed out about 200 tombstones at a Wheeling cemetery. There were deadly floods in the region in 2017 and 2022.

Associated Press writers Isabella O'Malley in Philadelphia and John Raby in Charleston, West Virginia, contributed to this report.

Norma and John Black hug outside their flood-damaged home, Monday, June 16, 2025, in Valley Grove, W.Va. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

A damaged vehicle sits in flood debris, Monday, June 16, 2025, in Valley Grove, W.Va. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

John Black puts up a board over a washed out foot bridge over Battle Run creek, Monday, June 16, 2025, in Valley Grove, W.Va. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

A vehicle sits in flood debris, Monday, June 16, 2025, in Valley Grove, W.Va. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

A vehicle sits in flood debris, Monday, June 16, 2025, in Valley Grove, W.Va. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

A vehicle sits in flood debris, Monday, June 16, 2025, in Valley Grove, W.Va. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

AR Walker stands at his flood-damaged home along the little Wheeling creek, Monday, June 16, 2025, outside Wheeling, W.Va. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

AR Walker stands at his flood-damaged home along the little Wheeling creek, Monday, June 16, 2025, outside Wheeling, W.Va. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

In this image provided by the Wheeling West Virginia Fire Department, cars sit submerged in floodwaters, Saturday, June 14, 2025, in Wheeling, W.V. (Wheeling West Virginia Fire Department via AP)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Bob Weir, the guitarist and singer who as an essential member of the Grateful Dead helped found the sound of the San Francisco counterculture of the 1960s and kept it alive through decades of endless tours and marathon jams, has died. He was 78.

Weir’s death was announced Saturday in a statement on his Instagram page.

“It is with profound sadness that we share the passing of Bobby Weir,” a statement on his Instagram posted Saturday said. “He transitioned peacefully, surrounded by loved ones, after courageously beating cancer as only Bobby could. Unfortunately, he succumbed to underlying lung issues.”

Weir joined the Grateful Dead — originally the Warlocks — in 1965 in San Francisco at just 17 years old. He would spend the next 30 years playing on endless tours with the Grateful Dead alongside fellow singer and guitarist Jerry Garcia, who died in 1995.

Weir wrote or co-wrote and sang lead vocals on Dead classics including “Sugar Magnolia,” “One More Saturday Night” and “Mexicali Blues.”

After Garcia’s death, he would be the Dead's most recognizable face. In the decades since, he kept playing with other projects that kept alive the band's music and legendary fan base, including Dead & Company.

“For over sixty years, Bobby took to the road,” the Instagram statement said. "A guitarist, vocalist, storyteller, and founding member of the Grateful Dead. Bobby will forever be a guiding force whose unique artistry reshaped American music.”

Weir’s death leaves drummer Bill Kreutzmann as the only surviving original member. Founding bassist Phil Lesh died in 2024. The band's other drummer, Mickey Hart, practically an original member since joining in 1967, is also alive at 82. The fifth founding member, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, died in 1973.

Dead and Company played a series of concerts for the Grateful Dead’s 60th anniversary in July at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, drawing some 60,000 fans a day for three days.

Born in San Francisco and raised in nearby Atherton, Weir was the Dead's youngest member and looked like a fresh-faced high-schooler in its early years. He was generally less shaggy than the rest of the band, but he had a long beard like Garcia’s in later years.

The band would survive long past the hippie moment of its birth, with its ultra-devoted fans known as Deadheads often following them on the road in a virtually non-stop tour that persisted despite decades of music and culture shifting around them.

“Longevity was never a major concern of ours,” Weir said when the Dead got the Grammys’ MusiCares Person of the Year honor last year. “Spreading joy through the music was all we ever really had in mind, and we got plenty of that done.”

Ubiquitous bumper stickers and T-shirts showed the band's skull logo, the dancing, colored bears that served as their other symbol, and signature phrases like “ain't no time to hate” and “not all who wander are lost.”

The Dead won few actual Grammys during their career — they were always a little too esoteric — getting only a lifetime achievement award in 2007 and the best music film award in 2018.

Just as rare were hit pop singles. “Touch of Grey,” the 1987 song that brought a big surge in the aging band's popularity, was their only Billboard Top 10 hit.

But in 2024, they set a record for all artists with their 59th album in Billboard's Top 40. Forty-one of those came since 2012, thanks to the popularity of the series of archival albums compiled by David Lemieux.

Their music — called acid rock at its inception — would pull in blues, jazz, country, folk and psychedelia in long improvisational jams at their concerts.

“I venture to say they are the great American band,” TV personality and devoted Deadhead Andy Cohen said as host of the MusiCares event. “What a wonder they are.”

FILE - Bob Weir plays guitar with his band The Dead, formerly the Grateful Dead, at the Forum in the Inglewood section of Los Angeles, Calif. on Saturday May 9, 2009. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel,File)

FILE - This undated file photo shows members of the Grateful Dead band, from left to right, Mickey Hart, Phil Lesh, Jerry Garcia, Brent Mydland, Bill Kreutzmann, and Bob Weir. (AP Photo/File)

FILE - Kennedy Center Honors recipients from left; filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, the legendary American rock band the Grateful Dead band members Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann Bob Weir and blues rock singer-songwriter and guitarist Bonnie Raitt, applaud at at the 2024 Kennedy Center Honors reception in the East Room of the White House, Sunday, Dec. 8, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta,File)

FILE - Bob Weir arrives at Willie Nelson 90, celebrating the singer's 90th birthday on Saturday, April 29, 2023, at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. (Photo by Allison Dinner/Invision/AP,File)

FILE - Bob Weir of Dead & Company performs at Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival on Sunday, June 12, 2016, in Manchester, Tenn. (Photo by Amy Harris/Invision/AP,File)