5 ms·

It was a bad disaster. I was scheduled to be there, but took a look at the NOAA rainfall map the night before and canceled my trip. Calling it unthinkable is r

It was a bad disaster. I was scheduled to be there, but took a look at the NOAA rainfall map the night before and canceled my trip. Calling it unthinkable is really overselling it though. Mountain towns and roads flood when it rains a lot. If you search past years google search results for Chimney Rock, it floods with 3" to 5" inches of rain. The town is just a few feet above water level - I've walked along the river.

schiffern 2y ago
So you're saying it's a region already especially vulnerable to flooding. How is that supposed to be better?
- jjk166 2y ago
  They're not saying it was better, they're saying it was foreseeable.
  - schiffern 2y ago
    Doh! Thanks, that makes sense.
giraffe_lady 2y ago
I think they mean more literally historical, in the sense that like this is when people will remember becoming aware that inland mountain ranges are catastrophically vulnerable to hurricanes now. > Meteorologist Ben Noll said that the level of moisture transported to western North Carolina is more than 1.5 times greater than any event in the historical record for the region. This is a little more than "mountains flood when it rains" it seems.
saltminer 2y ago
> Mountain towns and roads flood when it rains a lot. > Chimney Rock, it floods with 3" to 5" inches of rain. This was no ordinary flood - Chimney Rock was basically wiped off the map. This isn't a "dry it out and replace the sheetrock" situation, most of the town is gone. That's not to say building several feet above a mountain river is a smart idea (or any river, for that matter), but this level of destruction hasn't been seen since the 1916 flood.
bbstats 2y ago
"mountain towns and roads flood when it rains a lot" Hurricanes never hit Western NC
- thehappypm 2y ago
  How is that even possible? The Southeast gets slammed by hurricanes constantly, and it's not like these mountains are a thousand miles inland.
  - ppseafield 2y ago
    A couple of factors keep most hurricanes away from the mountains. There's a strong gulf stream current that tends to lead hurricanes up along the east coast, sometimes as far north as NYC. And also the Gulf of Mexico can draw hurricanes away. Hurricanes dump so much rain on land that they have to be constantly replenished by water sources, otherwise they'll peter out pretty quickly. Land also exhibits something like drag on hurricanes and tends to slow them down. I bet there have been some hurricanes whose edges have grazed central NC, but the most intense weather (heavy, sideways rain, storm surges, and 200mph+ gusts) are experienced at the edge of the eye. It's rare that hurricanes are so big and intense that land far away from water experiences the worst of it. Source: grew up in south Florida.
- paganel 2y ago
  From the article, this might be rare but it has happened before: > Perhaps the only comparable event, in which a storm struck the Gulf of Mexico coast and dropped incredible amounts of rainfall hundreds of miles away, came in 1969 with Hurricane Camille. After making landfall in extreme southeastern Louisiana, Camille tracked over Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia before combining with a frontal boundary over Virginia and producing epic rains of up to 25 inches.
- dripton 2y ago
  Sure they do. Agnes and Hugo both tracked quite a bit west, for example.
matwood 2y ago
Rains a lot is an understatement. It was unthinkable. Entire towns are gone. 3 day rain totals of 20"+ across the region. https://climate.ncsu.edu/blog/2024/09/rapid-reaction-historic-flooding-follows-helene-in-western-nc/ https://climate.ncsu.edu/blog/2024/09/rapid-reaction-histori...
- layer8 2y ago
  The article notes a comparable event in 1969. It’s not unthinkable, just rare, and might become less rare with climate change.
  - matwood 2y ago
    I don't see 1969 in the article but, Perhaps the only local event in the same ballpark as this one for the southern Mountains is the flood of July 1916, when a remnant tropical storm caused rivers to swell and inundate Asheville and other mountain towns. For more than a century, that event has loomed large as the area’s flood of record. At the few river gauges in the region that observed both Helene and the 1916 storm, the crests since Helene have broken those long-standing records. The French Broad River and Swannanoa River – which collided at high speeds and high volumes in 1916 to overtake Biltmore Village – both saw new record crests during and after Helene. The French Broad River in Asheville rose 1.5 feet above its previous highest crest, and downstream at Blantyre, the river surpassed its 1916 crest and was still rising when the gauge stopped reporting on Friday afternoon. The Swannanoa River at Biltmore crested at 26.1 feet, more than five feet above its 1916 maximum and slightly above the apparent 26-foot crest in April 1791, making this effectively the worst flood along the river since North Carolina became a state. And I agree that it will become more common with climate change.
    - layer8 2y ago
      Not sure what is going on, because I don’t see your quote. What I see is: Perhaps the only comparable event, in which a storm struck the Gulf of Mexico coast and dropped incredible amounts of rainfall hundreds of miles away, came in 1969 with Hurricane Camille. After making landfall in extreme southeastern Louisiana, Camille tracked over Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia before combining with a frontal boundary over Virginia and producing epic rains of up to 25 inches.
interestica 2y ago
Did a previous version of the headline or article use the word "unthinkable"?

schiffern 2y ago

So you're saying it's a region already especially vulnerable to flooding. How is that supposed to be better?

jjk166 2y ago
They're not saying it was better, they're saying it was foreseeable.
- schiffern 2y ago
  Doh! Thanks, that makes sense.

giraffe_lady 2y ago

I think they mean more literally historical, in the sense that like this is when people will remember becoming aware that inland mountain ranges are catastrophically vulnerable to hurricanes now. > Meteorologist Ben Noll said that the level of moisture transported to western North Carolina is more than 1.5 times greater than any event in the historical record for the region. This is a little more than "mountains flood when it rains" it seems.

saltminer 2y ago

> Mountain towns and roads flood when it rains a lot. > Chimney Rock, it floods with 3" to 5" inches of rain. This was no ordinary flood - Chimney Rock was basically wiped off the map. This isn't a "dry it out and replace the sheetrock" situation, most of the town is gone. That's not to say building several feet above a mountain river is a smart idea (or any river, for that matter), but this level of destruction hasn't been seen since the 1916 flood.

bbstats 2y ago

"mountain towns and roads flood when it rains a lot" Hurricanes never hit Western NC

thehappypm 2y ago
How is that even possible? The Southeast gets slammed by hurricanes constantly, and it's not like these mountains are a thousand miles inland.
- ppseafield 2y ago
  A couple of factors keep most hurricanes away from the mountains. There's a strong gulf stream current that tends to lead hurricanes up along the east coast, sometimes as far north as NYC. And also the Gulf of Mexico can draw hurricanes away. Hurricanes dump so much rain on land that they have to be constantly replenished by water sources, otherwise they'll peter out pretty quickly. Land also exhibits something like drag on hurricanes and tends to slow them down. I bet there have been some hurricanes whose edges have grazed central NC, but the most intense weather (heavy, sideways rain, storm surges, and 200mph+ gusts) are experienced at the edge of the eye. It's rare that hurricanes are so big and intense that land far away from water experiences the worst of it. Source: grew up in south Florida.
paganel 2y ago
From the article, this might be rare but it has happened before: > Perhaps the only comparable event, in which a storm struck the Gulf of Mexico coast and dropped incredible amounts of rainfall hundreds of miles away, came in 1969 with Hurricane Camille. After making landfall in extreme southeastern Louisiana, Camille tracked over Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia before combining with a frontal boundary over Virginia and producing epic rains of up to 25 inches.
dripton 2y ago
Sure they do. Agnes and Hugo both tracked quite a bit west, for example.

matwood 2y ago

Rains a lot is an understatement. It was unthinkable. Entire towns are gone. 3 day rain totals of 20"+ across the region. https://climate.ncsu.edu/blog/2024/09/rapid-reaction-historic-flooding-follows-helene-in-western-nc/ https://climate.ncsu.edu/blog/2024/09/rapid-reaction-histori...

layer8 2y ago
The article notes a comparable event in 1969. It’s not unthinkable, just rare, and might become less rare with climate change.
- matwood 2y ago
  I don't see 1969 in the article but, Perhaps the only local event in the same ballpark as this one for the southern Mountains is the flood of July 1916, when a remnant tropical storm caused rivers to swell and inundate Asheville and other mountain towns. For more than a century, that event has loomed large as the area’s flood of record. At the few river gauges in the region that observed both Helene and the 1916 storm, the crests since Helene have broken those long-standing records. The French Broad River and Swannanoa River – which collided at high speeds and high volumes in 1916 to overtake Biltmore Village – both saw new record crests during and after Helene. The French Broad River in Asheville rose 1.5 feet above its previous highest crest, and downstream at Blantyre, the river surpassed its 1916 crest and was still rising when the gauge stopped reporting on Friday afternoon. The Swannanoa River at Biltmore crested at 26.1 feet, more than five feet above its 1916 maximum and slightly above the apparent 26-foot crest in April 1791, making this effectively the worst flood along the river since North Carolina became a state. And I agree that it will become more common with climate change.
  - layer8 2y ago
    Not sure what is going on, because I don’t see your quote. What I see is: Perhaps the only comparable event, in which a storm struck the Gulf of Mexico coast and dropped incredible amounts of rainfall hundreds of miles away, came in 1969 with Hurricane Camille. After making landfall in extreme southeastern Louisiana, Camille tracked over Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia before combining with a frontal boundary over Virginia and producing epic rains of up to 25 inches.

interestica 2y ago

Did a previous version of the headline or article use the word "unthinkable"?