I will be gathering information primarily from an article written by the National Hurricane Center and associated with the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration, and National Weather Service. and an article written by our school’s North Carolina State Climate Office.

Hurricane Helene hit land in Florida and made impacts across the entire southeastern part of the United States and even reaching some parts of the Midwest. One thing that I did not realize until doing this research is that it created dangerous weather (rain, wind, etc.) throughout more than just Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. Helene weather reached Florida, Tennessee, Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Alabama, Illinois, West Virginia, and Indiana, totaling to 12 states. Seven states experienced fatalities; FL(18), GA(28), SC(26), NC(85), TN(15),VA(2), and IN(1). It is clear that the impacts to North Carolina exceed the other states greatly.

Asheville, NC (and many other NC mountain towns) experienced a large amount of flooding as mountain streams began to rush through the streets. I have a vivid memory of watching the news during this time and watching a video of coffins from a gravesite being lifted up from the ground and carried throughout the town in the flooding waters. My grandparents house is in Maggie Valley, NC, which is about 40 minutes west of Asheville. Their house, which is up high on the mountain, remained standing but my grandma shared stories of watching mules carry prescriptions and necessities up to the people stuck in their houses, including her. This is one tiny example and a personal connection of mine to the measures taken by the community to survive during this time. In addition to this the roads, along with most other infrastructure within the communities, were destroyed. All travel by car was halted and resulted in my grandma being unable to drive to Raleigh for an extremely important event in my family. The impact seems small compared to many others, but it goes to show that the effects of Helene reached beyond the areas that experienced direct hits. The country as a whole experienced effects and loss.

Here is a picture of Chimney Rock, NC (approximately 1 hour from Asheville) captured by Meteorologist Vernon Turner and published by North Carolina State University. You can find it in the second article I cited at the beginning of this post.