We haven’t seen a disaster like this in years. Hurricane Helene made landfall Thursday night in the Big Bend of Florida as a Category 4 storm, and its aftereffects pummeled the Eastern Seaboard over the weekend, with storm surge, heavy rains, tornadoes, and even landslides stretching up through Georgia, Alabama, the Carolinas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia.
According to the Associated Press, at least 133 people have died as of Tuesday, with the largest concentration of fatalities recorded in the western regions of North Carolina; more than 600 people from that area alone are reported missing. About 1.6 million people in the affected states still have no electricity, and affected cities in Georgia and North Carolina have shut off running water.
The Biden administration approved emergency declarations for the affected states over the weekend and has dispatched officers from various federal agencies, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to assist with recovery efforts on the ground. Governors from the tri-state area have also deployed National Guard troops and state emergency responders to aid the efforts.
Naturally, the destruction has turned into yet another bit of electoral football, with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump visiting Georgia on Monday and raising unfounded conspiracies “about the Federal Government, and the Democrat Governor of [North Carolina], going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas.” The Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, has interrupted her campaign schedule to return to D.C. and meet with FEMA officials, with plans to visit storm-drenched states alongside President Joe Biden later this week.
According to a Colorado State University analysis, Helene is the third-biggest hurricane to have hit the Gulf Coast since 1988; Hurricane Irma, which landed in 2017, was the only Gulf storm this century that was larger in size. In fact, Helene is on track to become one of the five most destructive storms in U.S. history, with total damage costs potentially reaching up to $160 billion. Much of the storming and flooding appears to have passed, but the surviving communities will be suffering for weeks to come. Those stuck in the “apocalyptic” scenes in Asheville, North Carolina, may not have clean water readily available for weeks, a grim outcome for a noncoastal city once recognized as a “climate haven.”
Here’s what we know about why Hurricane Helene’s damage was so extensive, what conditions are like on the ground, and what could come next.
Brewing the Storm
We’re in the peak of a “highly active” hurricane season, which runs “from June 1 through November 30,” according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Most seasons see only one or two intense storms, but Helene marks the fourth major storm to hit the Gulf Coast in 2024. The conditions were ripe for Helene’s formation, thanks in large part to record-high temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, an effect of human-caused climate change.
A low-pressure wind formation reached the Yucatán Peninsula last week and gained strength from a hotter-than-usual Caribbean Sea, intensifying from a tropical storm to a Category 4 hurricane in just a matter of days as the weather formation traveled up the hot Gulf of Mexico. Floridians have been tracking and warning of Helene’s impact since last Monday, with the state government issuing emergency and evacuation orders to 61 counties.
Last Wednesday, a full day before the storm reached the shores, every coastal state from Florida to the Carolinas and up through Kentucky got racked by what is known as predecessor rainfall. This is a formation of hot moisture that led Helene through the Gulf, fueling record-level rains that drenched cities all the way to Asheville with inches and inches of water. That precipitation pushed runoff from the Appalachian Mountains, saturating the soil and knocking over trees.
Landfall
By the time Helene hit Florida’s Big Bend, spanning a diameter of 420 miles with wind speeds up to 140 mph, much of the Southeast had already reached its limit. Storm surges nearly 10 feet high slammed cities like Tampa and St. Petersburg—causing a dayslong sewage crisis in the latter as its low-lying water treatment plant was taken offline. The small coastal town of Steinhatchee was reportedly “wiped off the map.”
Trudging north, Helene slammed Atlanta with the largest amount of rain the city had borne since the late 1800s; destroyed transmission lines across Georgia, cutting off power to a number of hospitals; and left a trail of mass property destruction in Valdosta and Augusta—the latter of which still lacks power in several neighborhoods and is also undergoing a temporary water “disruption” as utilities assess the damage.
A sudden “wobble” in Helene’s trajectory pushed the storm east, lessening its ultimate impact on Alabama, although the Yellowhammer State still got some gusts of wind and rain and saw thousands of residents lose power. South Carolina fared way worse, as intense rains and flooding swept upstate regions and killed at least 30 people, making Helene the deadliest storm to hit the state since 1989. As of this writing, the Palmetto State is still facing the highest number of reported power outages of all the affected territories.
As it left South Carolina, Helene saw its strength finally reduced to that of a tropical storm. But the damage still to come was no less devastating. East Tennessee was the site of several particularly dramatic events: the 50 residents rescued from the rooftop of a hospital in Unicoi County, where dozens of people in the Latino-populated community are still missing; the floodwaters that surrounded an Impact Plastics plant in Erwin, which trapped and killed an unidentified number of employees, leaving still more unaccounted for; the swelling of various streams in the Smoky Mountains; and the collapse of multiple state bridges. In Kentucky, the city of Lexington caught record-breaking rains and high-speed winds that toppled power lines and sparked a minor fire in one neighborhood.
North Carolina
No area seems to have been hit worse than western North Carolina, which saw “the worst flooding in a century,” according to the Associated Press. The problem wasn’t the coast—it was the rain. There were “three days of extreme, unrelenting precipitation,” according to NC State University, with dozens of inches of water falling over the state’s mountains and municipal centers. At least six tornadoes followed, along with brutal mountain landslides.
On Friday, the state Department of Transportation declared on social media that “all roads in Western NC should be considered closed.” On Monday, the state’s emergency management department reiterated that roadways should still be “considered closed to all non-emergency travel.” The closure of at least 200 roads has made it difficult for even emergency vehicles to get to where help is needed, all while service for cellular and internet and electricity networks remains down; some aid has been airlifted to the hard-hit Buncombe County.
The flooding swelled several of the area’s rivers up to 17 feet and almost totally submerged Asheville’s famed River Arts District, leaving some small businesses “completely destroyed,” per local reports. An entire portion of Interstate 40, near the Tennessee border, collapsed into the nearby Pigeon River; drinking water is scarce and will likely remain so for weeks, per local officials.
Other dispatches from the ground noted these brutal details:
The rushing water rose 5 feet higher in the Swannanoa River than anyone had ever seen. The ground disappeared on South Tunnel Road, leaving a giant sinkhole full of asphalt soup. Houses floated away from subdivisions. Bridges crumbled. The floodwaters flipped semitrucks into mangled piles. Mud and tree branches and food from local grocery stores flowed into the streets. Survivors traipsed through muck to find drinking water, power, Wi-Fi and cell service.
The tiny town of Spruce Pine, which lies near the Appalachian Mountains and is home to the United States’ largest deposits of quartz (an essential mineral for semiconductors and solar panels), has been bludgeoned, with the probable effect of disrupting production of the very clean energy sources we’ll need to mitigate long-term climate catastrophe. Helene won’t be the worst of it.
What Happens Next
For out-of-state relief efforts, GoFundMe has created a dedicated landing page of verified fundraising pleas from hurricane survivors. Chefs from World Central Kitchen are on the ground, giving food and water to devastated neighborhoods, and are taking donations. North Carolina has also set up a state disaster relief fund, which accepts donations from anyone, anywhere.
Those who make it through Helene will need a lot of monetary aid in the coming weeks as various economic effects compound: widespread lack of home insurance, obstruction of transportation and mail routes delaying the passage of aid, jobs lost with little guarantee of recovery, and overwhelmed unemployment systems. Jonathan Alingu, a Floridian who’s helping out affected residents through his organization Central Florida Jobs With Justice, told me that as these impacts add up, “a lot of people are just going to leave these states, because they’re not gonna be able to survive.”
