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Tropical Major Hurricane Helene

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thunderwolf said:
I know along the coast, it is pretty routine to have mandatory evacuation orders in place for low-lying or flood prone areas. Were there any evacuation orders issued similarly for these mountain locations? The impacts of this event were pretty well forecasted, but based on the anticipated large death toll and survivor interviews, it does not seem like the general public really understood what was about to happen.
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If you read some of the warnings that GSP was putting out all day on Wednesday and Thursday, I think you’ll see there was plenty of warning on this. Also from other posters on here, local TV stations were sounding the alarm all week.
 
EV/WS said:
We’re driving to St Louis area next wed the 9th. As it stands now its the WV route (77N to 64W).

Need a mouth piece due to the roads.
Teeth jarring. I went this route in May.

Or 77N to 81 to Knoxville then 75N to 64W. (My preferred route due to never gone that route and the beauty).

Second option is only 15 minutes longer.
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Personally I would go 77 to 81 to 40 to 24 to 64, but you do have to deal with Nashville, depending on the time of day you hit it.
 
They are sending in more starlinks on top of ones already sent in. Should just about resolve 95% of the comminication blackout
 
There’s this massive 4 acre gap over in the woods at my dad’s compound and I’m convinced it was a tornado. We’ve got rootballed trees laying in every single direction and it got every single tree. Pic doesn’t really do it justice.IMG_9803.jpeg
 
Chazwin said:
If you read some of the warnings that GSP was putting out all day on Wednesday and Thursday, I think you’ll see there was plenty of warning on this. Also from other posters on here, local TV stations were sounding the alarm all week.
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I agree the alarms were sounded via NWS and TV meteorologists. But what I did not see publicized were evacuation orders prior to the storm. While an event like this is very rare, perhaps the county emergency management in the area should consider evacuation orders in select areas in the future, similar to how its handled along the coast.
 
thunderwolf said:
I agree the alarms were sounded via NWS and TV meteorologists. But what I did not see publicized were evacuation orders prior to the storm. While an event like this is very rare, perhaps the county emergency management in the area should consider evacuation orders in select areas in the future, similar to how its handled along the coast.
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That’s very true. I’m not sure what if any evacuations were issued. I would point out that though that there were a lot of areas that flooded that have never been known to flood.
 
Jimmy Hypocracy said:
There’s this massive 4 acre gap over in the woods at my dad’s compound and I’m convinced it was a tornado. We’ve got rootballed trees laying in every single direction and it got every single tree. Pic doesn’t really do it justice.View attachment 152448
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I saw a lot of this with fran around where I lived. It was crazy and based on the fact the trees were in the same direction I don't think it was a tornado
 
I finally got my power back just after 8:15 PM last night. Relief! The total outage here was 115 hours. The fridge and freezer were at 70F meaning most of the food was thrown out. The warmest it got in the house was only 83 though it was very sticky. But relative to many other areas, this area got off lightly overall from Helene. About 13% in the area remain w/o power.
 
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Chazwin said:
That’s very true. I’m not sure what if any evacuations were issued. I would point out that though that there were a lot of areas that flooded that have never been known to flood.
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I do agree a lot of places flooded that don't tend to flood. And it was fairly obvious to those who followed this system closely that it would happen too. But for whatever reason, that risk was not communicated effectively to the public.

I know we like to get on here and criticize models when they aren't exactly right, but in general they do a pretty good job. The biggest hurdle in weather forecasting continues to be the communication of the science so that members of the public truly understand when they are at risk. IMO, that area of meteorology needs a lot more research vs throwing more money at numerical weather prediction.
 
NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) is located in Asheville and was impacted by Helene:


I just checked, and it looks like their website is back up and running now, but they do have a message on there:
"NCEI in Asheville has been significantly impacted by Hurricane Helene. We are working to resolve these issues as soon as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience."
 
I talked to a few REDS team members I know who are still up there recovering bodies. We don't even have the worst of what happened documented yet. Folks it's bad.....really bad with so many people living on or around creeks and rivers. Getting to all the bodies is frustrating because there is so much debri to sort through. Those people are going to have a rough time for the foreseeable future.
 
Brick Tamland said:
I keep thinking about the many remote places in the mountains and how many people could have been caught up in the flooding and mud slides that we don't even know about yet.
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Helene is already the second deadliest hurricane to strike the United States in the past fifty years with a death toll of over 180 people and unfortunately still climbing. When people in the Blue Ridge Mountains hear the word hurricane they will think about Helene much like my parents always remembered Hazel and my generation thinks about Fran in central North Carolina. The tourism industry in the mountains suffered millions of dollars in damage from the storm and will suffer millions more in lost revenue during this fall's peak color viewing season.
 
thunderwolf said:
I do agree a lot of places flooded that don't tend to flood. And it was fairly obvious to those who followed this system closely that it would happen too. But for whatever reason, that risk was not communicated effectively to the public.

I know we like to get on here and criticize models when they aren't exactly right, but in general they do a pretty good job. The biggest hurdle in weather forecasting continues to be the communication of the science so that members of the public truly understand when they are at risk. IMO, that area of meteorology needs a lot more research vs throwing more money at numerical weather prediction.
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My wife is an instructional designer. She always comments on how well NWS coumminicates information but sometimes, people just aint listening. You can only do what you can do.
 
weather bubba said:
Helene is already the second deadliest hurricane to strike the United States in the past fifty years with a death toll of over 180 people and unfortunately still climbing. When people in the Blue Ridge Mountains hear the word hurricane they will think about Helene much like my parents always remembered Hazel and my generation thinks about Fran in central North Carolina. The tourism industry in the mountains suffered millions of dollars in damage from the storm and will suffer millions more in lost revenue during this fall's peak color viewing season.
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You're not including Hurricane Maria which killed 3,000 in Puerto Rico are you ?
 
thunderwolf said:
I do agree a lot of places flooded that don't tend to flood. And it was fairly obvious to those who followed this system closely that it would happen too. But for whatever reason, that risk was not communicated effectively to the public.

I know we like to get on here and criticize models when they aren't exactly right, but in general they do a pretty good job. The biggest hurdle in weather forecasting continues to be the communication of the science so that members of the public truly understand when they are at risk. IMO, that area of meteorology needs a lot more research vs throwing more money at numerical weather prediction.
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A good many years back a study (I forget if it was the NWS or not) that most people can not point their home out on a map.
 
SD said:
I saw a lot of this with fran around where I lived. It was crazy and based on the fact the trees were in the same direction I don't think it was a tornado
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Same here in Fran...however I watched with my own eyes what was for lack of a better term a mesovortex tear through the woods right beside my house during the eyewall of Bertha we could follow a clear path for a quarter mile where every single tree was downed...we actually saw what looked like a tornado come out of the woods and cross the field before entering the woods again. So do these count as tornados or not lol...it was not in a band but rather the inner north eyewall right as we were going into the eye.

Could such features still occur in systems that long after landfall...I mean Bertha here was a actual cane still with a clear eye....but Helene was far from thar in SC though there was still a rem eyewall feature.
 
Downeastnc said:
Same here in Fran...however I watched with my own eyes what was for lack of a better term a mesovortex tear through the woods right beside my house during the eyewall of Bertha we could follow a clear path for a quarter mile where every single tree was downed...we actually saw what looked like a tornado come out of the woods and cross the field before entering the woods again. So do these count as tornados or not lol...it was not in a band but rather the inner north eyewall right as we were going into the eye.

Could such features still occur in systems that long after landfall...I mean Bertha here was a actual cane still with a clear eye....but Helene was far from thar in SC though there was still a rem eyewall feature.
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Yeap I was just east of the eye in Cape Carteret when it came ashore and there were wooded lots with every tree flattened. The eye cleared out just before landfall.


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Somewhere back around mid last week, before the PRE event set in, someone here rightly predicted that the mountains would sustain catastrophic damage and be worse off than everywhere other than the direct hit on coastline.

I wish I had the time to go back and find that comment in this thread.
 
Interesting take on flood control.







In 1933, the Tennessee Valley Authority was given the mandate for flood control in the valley of the Tennessee River and its tributaries. Over the next 40 years, they built 49 dams, which, for the most part, accomplished their goal. Whereas floods in the Tennessee were once catastrophic, younger people are mostly unaware of them.The French Broad River (Asheville) is an upstream tributary where flood control dams weren't constructed due to local opposition. Rather than the devastation of Hurricane Helene on Asheville illustrating the effect of climate change, the success of the flood control dams in other sectors of the Tennessee Valley illustrates the success of the TVA flood control program where it is implemented. Hurricane Helene did not show the effect of climate change, but what happens to settlements in Tennessee Valley tributaries under "natural" flooding (i.e. where flood control dams have been rejected.)
 
I edited a lot of this out. Bottom line these transformers are not easy to produce,replace. Think back to Moore County a year or so ago where someone(s) ---- out transformers. Left half county without power for like 2 weeks, waiting on parts to replace.

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Sandbar said:
Hard to compare at this point. When they are done recovering bodies this could be far worse. Recovering people in a mountain environment is more difficult
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Yeah that’s what I mean. Yancey County is one of the most rugged counties east of the Mississippi River. Even with all the manpower and equipment in the world, if the infrastructure is significantly broken, your modes of transportation move backward to the 19th century.
 
BullCityWx said:
Yeah that’s what I mean. Yancey County is one of the most rugged counties east of the Mississippi River. Even with all the manpower and equipment in the world, if the infrastructure is significantly broken, your modes of transportation move backward to the 19th century.
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Right now they need helicopters on top of helicopters and then some more
 
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