Record Floods Devastate Southern WV Coal Country

Production Loss Hard to Gauge, But Some Areas Worse Than Others

Historically, when any of us coal analysts write about flooding with regard to met coal markets around this time of year, more often than not we’d be writing about Queensland, Australia. Floods in that region created the first met coal bull market in my career back in 2007, and would go on to mark the beginning of two other prominent upcycles from 2010-2012, and 2016-2017.

So it was a bit of a surprise to sit down at the desk this morning and see this round of flooding headlines stream in from my home state of West Virginia.

As I noted in a tweet from earlier today…

Per @WOAYStormWatch this is the underpass on the way into Welch, WV in McDowell County.

About 25% of the ~9 Mst of US Low-Volatile met #coal production is sourced from McDowell County...there's also a snowstorm on its way. #CoalTwitter

Source: WOAY

While I’ve tried to get as much color as I can from folks who have boots on the ground down there, conclusions that can be drawn about near term effects on coal production are as murky as the floodwaters pictured above.

But in the interest of providing a frame of reference for readers to eventually come to their own murky conclusions, I thought I could at least provide a quick rundown on the number of tons immediately at risk…