A hurricane that formed in the Gulf of Mexico is barrelling north towards the mountains, where catastrophic flooding is likely to happen. So we asked a meteorologist why this storm will hit so hard.
Thank you for trying to make the situation more understandable for the average person. We, as a society generally, don’t take wind and water and the damage it can do quickly, seriously enough.
Thanks for this Jeremy... I'm in Hendersonville and we've already gotten maybe 8" of rain in the last 24 hrs. Low lying areas are flooding. Very concerned about trees coming down on our house when the high winds get here later.
I'm a civil engineer with a background in storm modeling and analysis, and honestly I went to bed Thursday night looking at the radar and thinking "well that doesn't look like it will be too bad". But I do remember hearing whispers of "this is going to be as bad or worse than the 1916 flood" and "the french broad is expected to break records", mostly on reddit. But the previous days rains didn't seem quite so massive, nor did two of the forecasts I saw before going to bed on 9/26, so I thought clearly it was a bit overblown.
But honestly looking back and the rainfall values its no surprise why it was as bad as it is, especially considering that the most dumped south of town, and the french broad drains south to north. This was somewhere in the ballpark of a 1/3 to 1/2 PMP (probable maximum precipitation storm event, which is the theoretical maximum event, though that is somewhat based on old data).
The bottom line is, clearly NOAA and some others knew exactly how bad this was likely going to be and it was not clearly communicated and disseminated to the people who live here, myself included. I'm not sure how differently it would have unfolded if people were maybe 24 hours more prepared (and obviously it did move fast), but I just don't think anyone expected anything near this bad until they woke up on Friday and witnessed it or finally got cell service back that weekend and started hearing more about the scale of devastation.
There are a lot of things that seemed to go wrong specific to this storm, but I am curious how unlikely something like this truly is moving forward. I've lived here for 3 and a half years now, and have personally witnessed 3 "100-year storms", and now this one is being called something in the neighborhood of a 30,000 year storm. It's hard to square the feeling that we've witnessed something truly historic and devastating so we know how it can happen, with the fact that technically it shouldn't happen again for a really long time. I do wonder how unlikely storms like this truly are moving forward, with climate change and the general topography and weather patterns of our region.
Will it be another 10 years, 50 years, 100 years, or 30,000 years until we get another "30,000 year storm" like this? Is the whole south, even this far inland just stuck with inherent hurricane and tropical storm risk? Do we completely abandon areas that have flooded in the past even though so much love, time, and money has been invested into them? How do we balance re-building the area as quickly as we can (which is very much needed), with rebuilding in a more resilient way?
I'm going to be digesting all of this and thinking about this for a really long time. Thanks for this great article!
"And so with this one, I expect you're gonna have a lot of valleys and towns that just have horrible flooding. You're probably gonna have roads that wash out."
Fascinating to read this after the storm which was as bad as feared, and maybe worse. It is also worth noting NE Tennessee had equally bad flooding and road damage. But to the initial point of you excellent write up as regards the NOAA warnings, I saw very little in the media pre-storm other than it would likely get to Asheville. For example the Apple weather app had nothing and IMO this shows one of the problems with everyone consuming media via their own unique algorithm - little or nothing new penetrates that bubble. Maybe Google, YouTube, FB etc. need tk be required to have this type of PSA as a cant skip visual - hell theh gek track everything we do now.
Thank you so much for this article. It's very enlightening. I would like to know what people can do in terms of planting deep-rooted grasses & other vegetation to keep the topsoil from eroding away, in their lawns and elsewhere, and to help trap & absorb water as opposed to letting it rapidly flow off. The erosion puts way more sediment into our streams. Your basic lawn turf, besides being an ecological wasteland, isn't deep-rooted. I also wonder what's happening to people in mobile homes, who are getting an even worse deal because private equity (a plague) is buying up mobile home parks and will be cutting maintenance and all other costs they can.
This article might be the most important artifact of this whole tragedy. I've forwarded it to friends and no one had any idea that the threat level was what NOAA had sent out in the release. Why? That's the question to ask here. It's clear that "The Media" (whatever that is anymore?) was expected, by NOAA to do their part in a public address system sort of way. Maybe that was the real failure.
I wrote my masters thesis on the 1940 hurricane-generated flood in the Upper Yadkin River watershed. This interview will be GOLD to someone writing an account of this 2024 disaster.
Thank you for trying to make the situation more understandable for the average person. We, as a society generally, don’t take wind and water and the damage it can do quickly, seriously enough.
Thanks for this Jeremy... I'm in Hendersonville and we've already gotten maybe 8" of rain in the last 24 hrs. Low lying areas are flooding. Very concerned about trees coming down on our house when the high winds get here later.
I'm a civil engineer with a background in storm modeling and analysis, and honestly I went to bed Thursday night looking at the radar and thinking "well that doesn't look like it will be too bad". But I do remember hearing whispers of "this is going to be as bad or worse than the 1916 flood" and "the french broad is expected to break records", mostly on reddit. But the previous days rains didn't seem quite so massive, nor did two of the forecasts I saw before going to bed on 9/26, so I thought clearly it was a bit overblown.
But honestly looking back and the rainfall values its no surprise why it was as bad as it is, especially considering that the most dumped south of town, and the french broad drains south to north. This was somewhere in the ballpark of a 1/3 to 1/2 PMP (probable maximum precipitation storm event, which is the theoretical maximum event, though that is somewhat based on old data).
The bottom line is, clearly NOAA and some others knew exactly how bad this was likely going to be and it was not clearly communicated and disseminated to the people who live here, myself included. I'm not sure how differently it would have unfolded if people were maybe 24 hours more prepared (and obviously it did move fast), but I just don't think anyone expected anything near this bad until they woke up on Friday and witnessed it or finally got cell service back that weekend and started hearing more about the scale of devastation.
There are a lot of things that seemed to go wrong specific to this storm, but I am curious how unlikely something like this truly is moving forward. I've lived here for 3 and a half years now, and have personally witnessed 3 "100-year storms", and now this one is being called something in the neighborhood of a 30,000 year storm. It's hard to square the feeling that we've witnessed something truly historic and devastating so we know how it can happen, with the fact that technically it shouldn't happen again for a really long time. I do wonder how unlikely storms like this truly are moving forward, with climate change and the general topography and weather patterns of our region.
Will it be another 10 years, 50 years, 100 years, or 30,000 years until we get another "30,000 year storm" like this? Is the whole south, even this far inland just stuck with inherent hurricane and tropical storm risk? Do we completely abandon areas that have flooded in the past even though so much love, time, and money has been invested into them? How do we balance re-building the area as quickly as we can (which is very much needed), with rebuilding in a more resilient way?
I'm going to be digesting all of this and thinking about this for a really long time. Thanks for this great article!
"And so with this one, I expect you're gonna have a lot of valleys and towns that just have horrible flooding. You're probably gonna have roads that wash out."
I-40 says "It me!"
Over 5" today in Belmont, and the creeks and streams are now mini-rapids. Tomorrow's gonna be a bugger!
Thanks Jeremy. We’ve had 24 hours of rain here in Brevard already. Easy to see how the ground can’t take much more. I worry about Canton.
Thank you for the expert analysis, Jeremy!
Thank Tim!
Fascinating to read this after the storm which was as bad as feared, and maybe worse. It is also worth noting NE Tennessee had equally bad flooding and road damage. But to the initial point of you excellent write up as regards the NOAA warnings, I saw very little in the media pre-storm other than it would likely get to Asheville. For example the Apple weather app had nothing and IMO this shows one of the problems with everyone consuming media via their own unique algorithm - little or nothing new penetrates that bubble. Maybe Google, YouTube, FB etc. need tk be required to have this type of PSA as a cant skip visual - hell theh gek track everything we do now.
Thank you so much for this article. It's very enlightening. I would like to know what people can do in terms of planting deep-rooted grasses & other vegetation to keep the topsoil from eroding away, in their lawns and elsewhere, and to help trap & absorb water as opposed to letting it rapidly flow off. The erosion puts way more sediment into our streams. Your basic lawn turf, besides being an ecological wasteland, isn't deep-rooted. I also wonder what's happening to people in mobile homes, who are getting an even worse deal because private equity (a plague) is buying up mobile home parks and will be cutting maintenance and all other costs they can.
This article might be the most important artifact of this whole tragedy. I've forwarded it to friends and no one had any idea that the threat level was what NOAA had sent out in the release. Why? That's the question to ask here. It's clear that "The Media" (whatever that is anymore?) was expected, by NOAA to do their part in a public address system sort of way. Maybe that was the real failure.
I wrote my masters thesis on the 1940 hurricane-generated flood in the Upper Yadkin River watershed. This interview will be GOLD to someone writing an account of this 2024 disaster.