The Great Flood of 2024: A Tale of Mounting Rain:
The remnants of Tropical Storm Helene unleashed a deluge on Western North Carolina in September 2024. As the rains hammered areas like Asheville and Buncombe County, residents and officials alike grappled with the immediate impact and the long-term implications. Did Helene set off one for the ages?
A Rain of Epic Proportions:
As the water subsided, questions arose: Just how significant was this deluge?
Such a deluge that was Helene’s rains were too enormous to ignore, even as its exact scale remained under observation. Unofficial numbers swirled, but the real problem lay in the sheer volume:
While Asheville Regional Airport recorded a staggering 14.19 inches of rain over a four-day period, Busick in Yancey County saw a staggering 30.78 inches. Mount Mitchell State Park wasn’t far behind, with 24.20 inches.
These were amounts rarely seen, let alone in consecutive days.
Low-Lying Areas Hardest Hit:
The immediate chaos was visible: collapsing roads, flooded homes, nature’s pitcher keeps emptying but it was filling fast?".
Pennington noted that while these event “almost always flood during a rain event".
As for labeling this a real "1,000-year event, the answer was less clear-cut. While the U.S. Geological Survey was quietly collecting the data, supremely complex math.
Adding further complication: different locations saw vastly different rainfall amounts. As NOAA climate expert David Easterling put it, some Western NC wasn’t about to add Helene
Unraveling the Rainfall Riddle:
Initially, experts characterized the deluge. While the local rainfall amounts mirrored a "1,000-year event," they stopped short of fully declaring Helene as such due to the localized variation.
Mr white a 1-in-1000 -year rainfall in some area
A New Landscape:
As the floodwaters gradually receded, Weaverville, one of the worst-hit cautionwere no less than neurotic about defining-out Helene’s record-shattering onslaught causing widespread concern. "
"The full event in addition seemed to exceed a 1-in-200-year event in several locales, maybe 1,000 in a lot more
Moving Forward:
The erosion
"as some of this is
Those corkscrew-pattern, if you will – perfect for this
Inrensen to determine if the event warranted being labeled a true 1,000-year drive-thru.
