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Helene- diva checkin
- Thread starter sorcamc
- Start date
marzNC
Angel Diva
Thanks for asking! It's really bad along the NC/TN border. I-40 is closed except for emergency traffic going west from Hickory. That's 80 miles from Asheville. Asheville is a city of about 100,000. There is a 7:30pm to 7:30am curfew. There are other towns with curfews as well.
September 29, 2024
828newsnow.com
I've been in touch with @SarahXC . They are south of Asheville in Hendersonville. Their house up on a hill is fine. Trees down, no power, but for now they have the generator going and stocked up on water.
@TNtoTaos checked in with @Tennessee . She lives near the NC/TN border. No cell service, power, or water. She could find a cell signal not too far away to use her phone earlier today.
September 29, 2024
How to help: Ways to donate to Hurricane Helene victims in our community - Asheville's 828NewsNOW
Residents affected by Hurricane Helene in Buncombe County and surrounding areas need your help. From donating to local relief funds to providing essential supplies for displaced families and farmers, there are several ways to make a difference. Learn more about how you can contribute to the...
828newsnow.com
I've been in touch with @SarahXC . They are south of Asheville in Hendersonville. Their house up on a hill is fine. Trees down, no power, but for now they have the generator going and stocked up on water.
@TNtoTaos checked in with @Tennessee . She lives near the NC/TN border. No cell service, power, or water. She could find a cell signal not too far away to use her phone earlier today.
santacruz skier
Angel Diva
marzNC
Angel Diva
Where I live near Raleigh in central NC was far enough east not to get much in the way of high winds this time, meaning over 30 mph. We got a couple inches of rain on Friday morning at the house, then it cleared by mid-afternoon. Schools in the Triangle were mostly closed for the day. My daughter was happy to have a day off since she is a preschool teacher. She went to college at UNC Asheville, Class of 2022, so we know the city well. Very sad seeing the pictures of Biltmore Village and the River Arts area under water. Both of those neighborhoods are right next to the river that runs through the city.
There was a tornado in Rocky Mount as the worst of Helene moved through NC. Rocky Mount is an hour east of RDU airport.
September 30, 2024
www.wral.com
Asheville is more or less in the center of the largest dark area that received 10+ inches in less than 48 hours. Needless to say, parts of SC and GA are a mess too.
There was a tornado in Rocky Mount as the worst of Helene moved through NC. Rocky Mount is an hour east of RDU airport.
September 30, 2024
Rocky Mount tornado: Four victims released from hospital as city recovers from EF3 damage
Four people who were in critical condition at the hospital have been released following last week's EF3 tornado in Rocky Mount. The tornado injured 15 people overall.
www.wral.com
Asheville is more or less in the center of the largest dark area that received 10+ inches in less than 48 hours. Needless to say, parts of SC and GA are a mess too.
Has anyone heard from @snowski/swimmouse? She's in Spartanburg.
VickiK
Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Yes, they are. Just awful.
marzNC
Angel Diva
There have been bad floods in the NC mountains before. In 1916 the Biltmore estate lots the greenhouses for a money-making nursery because they were essentially next to the river. Biltmore Village flooded completely as well. The highest flood level was a few feet higher than in 1916. Of course, most newcomers to the area don't know the history. The River Arts section of Asheville was re-developed in the last decade and the shops, bars, and artist studios are in old industrial buildings right next to the river.
What was unprecedented was 10-20 inches of rain in less than 48 hours. Once mudslides brought trees into streams and rivers, that meant the amount of debris moving fast and hitting low lying bridges was far more than during other storms.
This article from a local media outlet in Asheville includes video clips and photos of the devastation.
September 30, 2024
What was unprecedented was 10-20 inches of rain in less than 48 hours. Once mudslides brought trees into streams and rivers, that meant the amount of debris moving fast and hitting low lying bridges was far more than during other storms.
This article from a local media outlet in Asheville includes video clips and photos of the devastation.
September 30, 2024
floridakeysskibum
Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Apparently that region received a lot of rain before Helene intervened.
we were 200 + miles from the center of the storm, storm surge water came up the street to within 3 homes ( our lots are small 60’wide) or our place. our mahogany tree where my “wild” chickens roost fell over towards the street taking our concrete power pole with it. Luckily no chickens co were harmed. But we were without power for two days waiting for our power pole to be replaced.
my heart breaks for all those people, animals, businesses, etc. parts are florida are still flooded as well. Helene will go down in history for sure !!
we were 200 + miles from the center of the storm, storm surge water came up the street to within 3 homes ( our lots are small 60’wide) or our place. our mahogany tree where my “wild” chickens roost fell over towards the street taking our concrete power pole with it. Luckily no chickens co were harmed. But we were without power for two days waiting for our power pole to be replaced.
my heart breaks for all those people, animals, businesses, etc. parts are florida are still flooded as well. Helene will go down in history for sure !!
santacruz skier
Angel Diva
I wondered about you in the Florida keys
TNtoTaos
Angel Diva
Sorry, I was playing tennis and then watching the debate. Here in Middle Tennessee we got 3+ solid days of heavy rain, but no significant flooding that I'm aware of. I'm up on a ridge, so am very lucky in that respect. Unfortunately the E TN/W NC areas just got slammed, and they had also been getting a lot of rain even before the hurricane hit, so it was a "perfect storm," unfortunately.
@Tennessee told me that although she has no cell, water, or power, her neighbors have generators, and she has a camp stove and a well, so she's feeling extremely lucky.
marzNC
Angel Diva
Here's a comprehensive look at the weather from Brad Panovich, the Charlotte TV news Chief Meteorologist. Brad does weekly snow forecasts for SkiSoutheast during the season. He's a skier who usually does a 1-week ski vacation during the winter.
First posted September 27, 2024 (Charlotte, NC)
How you can help people impacted by Helene
There are many ways to help the Carolinas. WCNC Charlotte partnered with the American Red Cross for monetary donations and Operation Airdrop for supplies.
www.wcnc.com
October 1, 2024
Tennessee
Angel Diva
Wow @marzNC, that report by Brad Panovich is the best thing I’ve seen about the situation here! I just got cell phone service yesterday so information to and from the people affected was totally lacking and that has been ( and continues to be) a huge problem. No land lines, no power, no water and no cell or internet since Friday. And what Brad said about mountain communities that are completely cut off is so very true here. They have become islands. Roads completely washed away, not just trees blocking roads — which is also widespread. So these mountain communities are slowly being reached by helicopter, mule trains and horses. But it seems the communities themselves are really coming together and neighbors are helping neighbors in heartwarming ways. I was lucky that my neighbors and I could clear trees from our road and reach a road that was still passable to get to a town less affected (Elizabethton) with available services. Many people here are still not that lucky. I’m kind of in the middle of a triangle comprised of the towns of Elizabethton, Roan Mountain and Erwin — Erwin was on national news I think when more than 50? people had to be rescued from the hospital roof, so you may have seen that. Anyway, it’s bad here still for many people and I’m one of the luckier ones. This was and is a catastrophic event. Thank you to this Ski Diva community for your concern. @TNtoTaos reached out to me by text because we’ve skied together several times and places, so thanks Lorraine. Nice to know y’all care. This is a pretty poor area so like Brad said, money donations to rescue groups will help.
Tennessee
Angel Diva
Some might find this interesting. Not my words, I just copied it off Facebook. This is Greene county and not even generally considered one of the hardest areas hit so…
Hurricane Helene: A note to friends outside of the South.
We live in Greene County, East Tennessee. Our county’s southern border is the Tennessee-North Carolina state line that runs along the heights of the Appalachian Mountains. We are within the hardest hit region of the U.S.
The questions I have been hearing a lot is why was this so bad, and why weren’t people prepared. I’ll try to answer those questions in the following post.
Hurricane Helene was the strongest hurricane (in recorded history) to hit the Florida panhandle region. It is the deadliest hurricane to hit the United States since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The death toll is over 160 so far. We are still finding bodies, and there are still many, many people missing as I write this today six days after the hurricane hit land.
I work in the emergency department at Greeneville Community Hospital. The hospital itself has been evacuated because we have no water in the majority of the county. We are still running our emergency department as a critical access site for our community. Fortunately, I have a well and didn’t lose electricity for long. I was able to haul water in a 300 gallon tote in the back of my truck to the hospital for the first few days so we could flush toilets and wash hands. It took a few days, but we now have porta-potties and water tanks on trucks to keep the emergency department running.
Under an hour from our hospital to the east, Unicoi County Hospital was flooded requiring patients and providers to be rescued from the roof via helicopter.
Under an hour from our hospital to the south, over the mountains, Asheville, NC has been hit particularly hard.
But why was this region hit so hard?
First, we had a lot of rain before Hurricane Helene even showed up. Depending on the area, we had 7-11 inches of rain in the week before the first storm clouds of the hurricane arrived. This rain saturated the ground and filled ponds and streams.
Then the hurricane arrived. She barreled her way up through the panhandle of Florida, quickly shot through Georgia, and then slowed down and stalled over North Carolina and East Tennessee. And that’s right where we live.
The reason she stalled involves atmospheric pressure conditions that I don’t fully understand, but the result was that this hurricane dropped 20 inches to over 30 inches of rain in some areas… that’s an estimated 40 trillion gallons of rain.
How much is 40 trillion gallons of water?
40 trillion gallons of water is enough to fill the Dallas Cowboy’s stadium 51,000 times.
40 trillion gallons of water is enough to cover the entire state of North Carolina with 3.5 FEET of water.
40 trillion gallons of water is enough to fill 60 MILLION Olympic-sized swimming pools.
40 trillion gallons of water is 619 DAYS of water flowing over Niagara Falls.
So this is an unprecedented amount of rain already falling on an area that had just received ground-saturated rain.
But it wasn’t just the amount of rain, it was the geography of where that rain fell.
The southeastern slopes (of western North Carolina) and the northwestern slopes (of East Tennessee) acted as funnels or rain catchments that directed all this water downhill and concentrated it into streams and rivers running into the valleys. It overflowed these streams and rivers causing massive flooding.
How much flooding?
The French Broad River usually crests at 1.5 feet… but it reached 24.6 feet during the storm.
The Nolichuckey River rose to almost 22 feet. The Nolichuckey River Dam in Greene County, during the peak of the flooding, took on 1.2 MILLION gallons of water per SECOND. Compare that to Niagara Falls which peaks at 700,000 gallons per second. Fortunately, this dam held… but barely, with damage.
Consequences.
The flooding, and all the things the flooding carried with it (large trees, vehicles, buildings, etc.) caused widespread damage. It destroyed homes and businesses. It destroyed roads and bridges. It knocked out power.
This isolated many places for days and days from normal rescue efforts and evacuation plans.
Here in Greene County, the flooding destroyed the intake pump for the county’s primary water supply. We hope they will be able to bring in a temporary pump to bypass the damaged system, but that still may take a couple weeks. In the meantime, most people in the county have no clean water for drinking, washing hands, or bathing, and no water for sanitation.
I have taken care of people in the emergency department who had their homes literally washed away. Everything they own, other than the clothes on their back, has been lost. Many friends have had their homes almost destroyed by flooding and their houses are filled with mud and debris.
And this is just in my immediate area. Other places around us have unfortunately been hit harder.
Why weren’t people prepared?
No one in the mountains of North Carolina or East Tennessee prepares for a hurricane.
It’s kind of like asking why someone in Iowa doesn’t prepare for a tidal wave or why someone in Florida doesn’t prepare for a blizzard. It’s not what happens, like ever.
This was a combination of already rain-saturated ground before the hurricane hit, the hurricane/storm stalling over this region dumping unprecedented amounts of rainfall in a small area, and the geography of mountains channeling and concentrating all this water into the valleys below that created a perfect storm, so to speak, of conditions that caused this disaster.
It couldn’t have been prevented or prepared for.
Please feel free to share this. Hopefully it answers some questions and provides a better understanding of what has happened and why it is so devastating.
Hurricane Helene: A note to friends outside of the South.
We live in Greene County, East Tennessee. Our county’s southern border is the Tennessee-North Carolina state line that runs along the heights of the Appalachian Mountains. We are within the hardest hit region of the U.S.
The questions I have been hearing a lot is why was this so bad, and why weren’t people prepared. I’ll try to answer those questions in the following post.
Hurricane Helene was the strongest hurricane (in recorded history) to hit the Florida panhandle region. It is the deadliest hurricane to hit the United States since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The death toll is over 160 so far. We are still finding bodies, and there are still many, many people missing as I write this today six days after the hurricane hit land.
I work in the emergency department at Greeneville Community Hospital. The hospital itself has been evacuated because we have no water in the majority of the county. We are still running our emergency department as a critical access site for our community. Fortunately, I have a well and didn’t lose electricity for long. I was able to haul water in a 300 gallon tote in the back of my truck to the hospital for the first few days so we could flush toilets and wash hands. It took a few days, but we now have porta-potties and water tanks on trucks to keep the emergency department running.
Under an hour from our hospital to the east, Unicoi County Hospital was flooded requiring patients and providers to be rescued from the roof via helicopter.
Under an hour from our hospital to the south, over the mountains, Asheville, NC has been hit particularly hard.
But why was this region hit so hard?
First, we had a lot of rain before Hurricane Helene even showed up. Depending on the area, we had 7-11 inches of rain in the week before the first storm clouds of the hurricane arrived. This rain saturated the ground and filled ponds and streams.
Then the hurricane arrived. She barreled her way up through the panhandle of Florida, quickly shot through Georgia, and then slowed down and stalled over North Carolina and East Tennessee. And that’s right where we live.
The reason she stalled involves atmospheric pressure conditions that I don’t fully understand, but the result was that this hurricane dropped 20 inches to over 30 inches of rain in some areas… that’s an estimated 40 trillion gallons of rain.
How much is 40 trillion gallons of water?
40 trillion gallons of water is enough to fill the Dallas Cowboy’s stadium 51,000 times.
40 trillion gallons of water is enough to cover the entire state of North Carolina with 3.5 FEET of water.
40 trillion gallons of water is enough to fill 60 MILLION Olympic-sized swimming pools.
40 trillion gallons of water is 619 DAYS of water flowing over Niagara Falls.
So this is an unprecedented amount of rain already falling on an area that had just received ground-saturated rain.
But it wasn’t just the amount of rain, it was the geography of where that rain fell.
The southeastern slopes (of western North Carolina) and the northwestern slopes (of East Tennessee) acted as funnels or rain catchments that directed all this water downhill and concentrated it into streams and rivers running into the valleys. It overflowed these streams and rivers causing massive flooding.
How much flooding?
The French Broad River usually crests at 1.5 feet… but it reached 24.6 feet during the storm.
The Nolichuckey River rose to almost 22 feet. The Nolichuckey River Dam in Greene County, during the peak of the flooding, took on 1.2 MILLION gallons of water per SECOND. Compare that to Niagara Falls which peaks at 700,000 gallons per second. Fortunately, this dam held… but barely, with damage.
Consequences.
The flooding, and all the things the flooding carried with it (large trees, vehicles, buildings, etc.) caused widespread damage. It destroyed homes and businesses. It destroyed roads and bridges. It knocked out power.
This isolated many places for days and days from normal rescue efforts and evacuation plans.
Here in Greene County, the flooding destroyed the intake pump for the county’s primary water supply. We hope they will be able to bring in a temporary pump to bypass the damaged system, but that still may take a couple weeks. In the meantime, most people in the county have no clean water for drinking, washing hands, or bathing, and no water for sanitation.
I have taken care of people in the emergency department who had their homes literally washed away. Everything they own, other than the clothes on their back, has been lost. Many friends have had their homes almost destroyed by flooding and their houses are filled with mud and debris.
And this is just in my immediate area. Other places around us have unfortunately been hit harder.
Why weren’t people prepared?
No one in the mountains of North Carolina or East Tennessee prepares for a hurricane.
It’s kind of like asking why someone in Iowa doesn’t prepare for a tidal wave or why someone in Florida doesn’t prepare for a blizzard. It’s not what happens, like ever.
This was a combination of already rain-saturated ground before the hurricane hit, the hurricane/storm stalling over this region dumping unprecedented amounts of rainfall in a small area, and the geography of mountains channeling and concentrating all this water into the valleys below that created a perfect storm, so to speak, of conditions that caused this disaster.
It couldn’t have been prevented or prepared for.
Please feel free to share this. Hopefully it answers some questions and provides a better understanding of what has happened and why it is so devastating.
marzNC
Angel Diva
For a first-hand view of what it's like when there is no power for days and roads are blocked by flood water, here's a video put together by a well known mountain biker in Hendersonville. I found out about it from NYSkiBlog guys who have ridden with him. That's about 25 miles south of Asheville. Towards the end of the video, he had to make the drive to Asheville to get a prescription for his daughter (had surgery recently).
September 30, 2024
If you view the video on YouTube, Seth has set up a fundraiser working with YouTube and the American Red Cross.
September 30, 2024
If you view the video on YouTube, Seth has set up a fundraiser working with YouTube and the American Red Cross.
marzNC
Angel Diva
He knows how lucky he is. Says so towards the end of the video. He has a huge number of followers, over 2 million. He took the time to put together an organized vlog of the first 5 days in order to generate views for a $50K fundraiser. Has already raised over $20K in two days.Can’t help it. I have to say it. That guy had it made with his electric truck and his generator and his Gator and his gas cans and his gas cook stove! Pretty ideal for him but not at all the norm unfortunately
@SarahXC told me Seth is very well known in the Hendersonville area. He's clearly been working hard to build and maintain bike trails for quite a while. That helps bring in tourist dollars. Hendersonville is a town 25 miles south of Asheville. While clearly there is storm damage there, and in Brevard, the situation is different than for the city of Asheville (population 100,000).
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marzNC
Angel Diva
Here's a video showing farmland to the north of Boone. Towards the end (12:30) there is drone footage of the washed out section of I-40 near the NC/TN border. At 13:30 there are still shots of assorted river water depth gauges for Sept. 24-30. The speed at which the water rose and fell shows why the situation for anything near a river or stream became so bad, so fast.
October 1, 2024
October 1, 2024
