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

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.