“Water was filling up, I would say, probably about an inch a minute,” he said. “I mean, it was pouring in, from the toilets, the windows, both doors.” Blindly stuffing clean laundry into a bag, he joined his wife and seven-year-old son outside and somehow managed to start the Jeep, which was underwater to the hood. Now, the family is staying at an evacuation shelter with 30 other storm survivors, wondering what comes next. Fesperman and his family are some of the lucky ones – they made it out with their lives. More than 200 people have now been confirmed dead, both in Florida where the hurricane first made landfall and across a five-state region in the southern Appalachians that includes North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia. That number continues to rise as search and rescue efforts remain ongoing. The disaster has destroyed towns, inflicted billions of dollars in damage, and prompted Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump to visit the stricken region.
Fesperman and his family are some of the lucky ones – they made it out with their lives. More than 200 people have now been confirmed dead, both in Florida where the hurricane first made landfall and across a five-state region in the southern Appalachians that includes North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia. That number continues to rise as search and rescue efforts remain ongoing. The disaster has destroyed towns, inflicted billions of dollars in damage, and prompted Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump to visit the stricken region. The catastrophe has unfolded in an area that was not meant to bear the brunt of Helene’s power, unleashing effects worse than the fabled flood of 1916. But the climate crisis has upended traditional models of hurricane season – generating storms that are faster, wetter and more powerful.Already a powerful storm on its own, Helene’s impact was bolstered by record-setting rains in the days preceding its arrival. Western North Carolina, which saw some of the worst effects, had been grappling with drought for over two months before the storm’s arrival. But heavy rains on Wednesday and Thursday saturated the soils and swelled the rivers. A weather station at the Asheville airport reported nearly 10 inches of rain over that two-day period.
Helene made landfall on the Florida Gulf coast as a category 4 hurricane and moved rapidly north. Hurricane-force winds and tornadoes swept through many of the affected communities, toppling trees and power lines, but water was by far the more destructive force.Average rainfall varies widely within the mountain region, but in many places it falls somewhere between 40in and 100in annually. Between 8am last Thursday and 8am on Monday, rainfalls north of 10in were common across western North Carolina. Hendersonville and Spruce Pine saw more than 20in, and Busick, an unincorporated community an hour north-east of Asheville, recorded an unprecedented 30.78in. These totals are in line with the forecast, said Steve Wilkinson, meteorologist-in-charge for the National Weather Service forecast office in Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina. But it was difficult to comprehend the scale of devastation such a storm would unleash.
“When you start talking about really specific impacts, it’s hard to imagine ahead of time that something this extreme could have the impact it did,” he said. When rain falls on the coast, it’s able to spread out over flat land, absorb into coastal marshes, and eventually drain back into the ocean. But in the mountains, water must follow topography, searching for the path of least resistance as it charges downhill. Heavy rains in the upper elevations gather force as they descend, converging with runoff from other swollen tributaries to turn creeks and rivers into roaring oceans. The water rushed through with devastating force, realigning riverbeds, ripping out roads, and obliterating entire communities. Wind gusts, in many places between 50 and 70mph, toppled trees and power lines already unsteady in the saturated soil. High flow on the Broad River combined with heavy local runoff to all but wipe the tourist town of Chimney Rock off the map. Just over the state line in Erwin, Tennessee, a raging Nolichucky River destroyed the town’s hospital and industrial park, also tearing out part of nearby Interstate 26.“We’re just a mourning community,” said Erwin’s mayor, Glenn White. “We are just heartbroken that our friends lost their lives. That’s the biggest issue for all of us.”It’s been a week since the storm hit, and the scale of damage is still unknown. The death toll continues to rise as first responders search for the missing and make their way into communities rendered unreachable......Devastating but across the planet, at least in the developed world but especially the United States, they still don't get the climate change connection! https://www.theguardian.com/