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Helene inundates North Carolina with historic flooding and outages

Posted on by Vanessa
Helene inundates North Carolina with historic flooding and outages

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Helene's streak of destruction has brought historic rainfall, flooding, power outages and winds of 140 miles per hour across the Southeast. But it was North Carolina that bore the brunt Saturday: Large swathes of cities like Asheville and Greeneville were under water, residents were trapped in their homes without light or food, and there were few functioning roads on which to walk Rescue workers were able to help.

Gov. Roy Cooper said Helene has become “one of the worst storms in modern history for parts of North Carolina.”

Zeb Smathers, the mayor of Canton, N.C., took to Facebook during a brief break to respond to what he called an “unimaginable and terrible disaster.”

“I have limited time to post, but this is the first message I have been able to convey following the apocalyptic flooding that struck us and the subsequent outages in cell communications,” Smathers wrote. “My heart is broken, not just for our city, but for the entire region.”

More than 400 roads remained closed in the Tar Heel State, including “all roads in western NC,” the North Carolina Department of Transportation said in a post on X. “Remember: While crews clear and inspect roads and bridges, give “Something in the room please.”

Crews needed more than just space to operate. Thanks to a rare coincidence of weather patterns in the eastern United States, well over 2 feet of rain had fallen across the state's mountainous region in recent days before Helene arrived in Florida on Thursday evening.

Tiny Busick in Yancey County on Tennessee's western border recorded 29.58 inches in just 48 hours. In Asheville, record highs were recorded on the French Broad River and the Swannanoa River near the Biltmore estate. Nearby, historic Biltmore Village was nearly submerged in water after Helene raced through the area, according to aerial photos.

There have been at least 5,000 emergency calls to 911 since September 26th. And with more than 200 North Carolinians needing rescue after torrential rains in Helene, local, state and federal officials mobilized to help.

North Carolina activated hundreds of its own National Guard, as did Georgia and Alabama, and the governors of Maryland and at least 17 other states sent their own Guard units. Three federal teams were also deployed, and supplies were flown Saturday as search and rescue operations continued across the state, Cooper said.

Helene made landfall near Perry, Florida, around 11:10 p.m. ET on Thursday, becoming the first known Category 4 storm to hit the Big Bend region of Florida since records began in 1851. The storm continued its advance over western Kentucky on Saturday, and was expected to do so. The National Hurricane Center said the hurricanes would move slowly southeast over the weekend and then east along the Kentucky-Tennessee border.

Biden reported on the “tragic loss of life” and devastation

On Saturday, President Joe Biden approved disaster relief for Tennessee. On Saturday evening, Biden was briefed by Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall and Deanne Criswell, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), on Helene's impact on several southeastern states, including Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee. .

“Criswell described the tragic loss of life across the region and the devastation in the Big Bend, Florida communities she visited today,” a White House statement said. Criswell will travel to Georgia on Sunday and North Carolina on Monday, it said, as part of the administration's efforts to speed up support for survivors and deploy more search and rescue teams to “accelerate recovery efforts” in North Carolina.

“The President will receive ongoing briefings throughout the weekend,” the White House said.

Fallen trees, power lines throughout the region

Strong winds with hurricane-force gusts toppled trees, power lines and cell phone towers across the region. Dozens of deaths have been attributed to Helene's attack, according to authorities and media reports across the southeast. The death toll was nearly 50 as of Saturday morning, and officials said they expected the death toll to continue to rise as they continued to go door-to-door in the wake of the storm.

A total of 635,887 outages were reported in North Carolina as of Saturday afternoon, according to the USA TODAY power outage map. In response, emergency crews from across the United States were on scene to assist with immediate recovery and repair efforts, the North Carolina Department of Public Safety said. As of Friday evening, 16 shelters in the state were housing about 1,100 residents. With cell service spotty in western areas of the state, telecommunications companies activated “disaster roaming,” “which allows any phone on any cellular network to access any available network to connect,” according to the Department of Public Safety of the state.

Statewide, at least 29 North Carolina counties and 52 cities issued emergency declarations, in addition to the statewide emergency declaration Cooper issued Wednesday before the storm.

“This is a historic and catastrophic storm for Western North Carolina and I am grateful to the first responders who are working right now to save lives and evacuate residents,” Cooper said.

Why is Helene so destructive?

Meteorologists began warning last Tuesday that a confluence of weather patterns was emerging that was likely to drench the region. A front overhead would interact with a plume of moisture drawn in ahead of Helene.

The rain “began long before the storm and spread from the Gulf to our area, and the circulation around the storm pushed moisture up from the extremely warm waters of the Gulf,” said David Easterling, a rain expert with the National Climate Assessment Technical Support Unit of NOAA.

Such interactions with a band of moisture ahead of a tropical storm or hurricane are called precursor events and have been documented in the past to result in heavy rainfall prior to the arrival of tropical storms and hurricanes. Jet stream winds blowing at more than 110 mph (180 km/h) provided upwelling that further increased moisture in the developing storms.

On Wednesday, the National Weather Service warned that parts of the region could see rainfall amounts of up to 3 inches per hour.

Satellite images showed the cyclone and the upper-level low to the northwest more or less merging on Wednesday, said David Roth, a meteorologist with the Weather Prediction Center.

Nearly 10 inches of rain fell in Asheville and 8 inches in Tryon along North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains on Wednesday and Thursday, according to preliminary weather service data. Another 6 inches (15 cm) fell over the two days in Bristol-Johnson, Tennessee, and more than 4 inches (10 cm) in Knoxville.

Helene's massive circulation mixed with more rain and then transitioned into a post-tropical cyclone.

Rain flowing into rivers in the mountainous regions quickly led to catastrophic flooding, reaching a new record high on the Pigeon River in Newport, Tennessee. At least three of the flood records broken Friday were set more than a century ago, when the remaining remnants of a tropical system in July 1916 were followed by another that dumped heavy rain.

Floods weighing 1,700 pounds per cubic meter washed away roads and cars and stranded residents in mountain communities. At Unicoi County Hospital in Erwin, Tennessee, floodwaters stranded 54 people on the roof.

Record-breaking rainfall amounts were reported in some locations across the Southeast Friday evening, with more than a foot of rain falling across much of Georgia and South Carolina. Amounts of 4 to 7 inches were common in Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.

In addition to Busick, stunning amounts of precipitation were recorded elsewhere in the North Carolina mountains. Mount Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi and a landmark along the Blue Ridge Parkway, was hit with more than 2 feet.

That rain in the high mountains of North Carolina then caused torrential torrents across the Southeast, forcing people from their homes in the middle of the night along the Nolichucky River in eastern Tennessee on Friday.

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