Dozens killed. Hospital-goers scrambling to rooftops to be whisked away in helicopters. Mayors frantically telling citizens to flee. And inmates desperately removed from a jail directly in the path of floodwaters.
Helene has brought a cascade of destruction across the Southeast. The record-breaking storm hit Florida as a hurricane with wind speeds of 140 mph that flattened buildings. It has since weakened to a post-tropical cyclone with 25 mph winds, but the deluge of rain it carries is leaving parts of North Carolina and Tennessee underwater, and some 3.8 million are without power Saturday morning.
“It’s destroyed,” Jordon Bowen of the Florida State Guard Special Missions Unit told The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Network, about the area where Helene made landfall. “Not accessible, debris, lots of hazards, downed power lines, houses cut in half.
Meanwhile, eye-popping rainfall totals were measured in the North Carolina mountains, including 29.6 inches at Busick and 24.2 inches at Mount Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi River and a landmark along the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Helene made landfall at about 11:10 p.m. ET Thursday near Perry, Florida, becoming the first known Category 4 storm to hit Florida’s Big Bend region since records began in 1851. The storm continued its push across western Kentucky on Saturday, and is expected to slowly move southeast, then east along the Kentucky-Tennessee border through the weekend, the National Hurricane Center said.
At least 43 people have died under Helene’s onslaught as of late Friday, according to authorities and media reports across the Southeast. Officials have said they expect the death toll to keep rising as they go door-to-door in the aftermath of the storm. Millions lost power and many lost their homes altogether or suffered extensive damage to their properties.
The destruction brought by Helene will continue to unfold even after its passing as the water it dumped flows into populated areas. But millions of people are beginning to take stock of what the storm took from them.
Why did Helene cause so much rain?
A confluence of weather patterns over the eastern U.S. set up the historic flooding that forced people from their homes in the dead of night Friday along the Nolichucky River in Tennessee, as officials warned of dam failures and raging torrents ravaged communities.
No comments:
Post a Comment