Editor-DN
Hurricane Helene wreaked havoc in the southeastern United States last week. At least 130 people were killed. By Tuesday, leaving Hundreds missingdue to which Record floods And storm surges and more Power cuts to millions of homes and businesses. Here’s a look at just how bad it was — and some of the reasons why.
According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Helene arrived as an “unusually large storm”, with violent winds. 560 km from its center. It was moving at twice the speed of a typical Gulf of Mexico hurricane.
The storm made landfall in Perry, Fla., on Thursday night as a Category 4 hurricane, with sustained winds of 225 km/h. According to NOAAwho said it was the most powerful attack ever to hit the United States off the coast of Florida. Storm Up to 4.6 meters.
Meteorologist Ryan Maw and Ed Clark, head of NOAA’s National Water Center, independently calculated that 151 trillion liters of water dumped over the southeastern United States over four days. That’s enough to fill and fill Lake Athabasca, Canada’s tenth largest, or to cover the entire surface of both Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to a depth of more than a meter.
Hurricane Helene wreaked havoc across the southeastern United States, destroying entire communities, killing dozens and leaving more than 1,000 missing. The remnants of the storm have hampered rescue efforts and efforts to deliver essential supplies.
The flooding caused record flooding in at least seven locations in North Carolina and Tennessee. The BBC reported. In Buncombe County, NC, where the town of Asheville suffered major damage, Ryan Cole, assistant director of local emergency services, described its effects as a “biblical” disaster..
What made Helen so evil?
It came on the tail of other rain storms
The state meteorologist said many places hit by Helene, such as Asheville, N.C., had received rain from two or three other storms before the remnants of the hurricane arrived, including one That was just short of the name along the North Carolina coast, the state’s meteorologist said. Kathy Dillo.
“Stormy rains from the remnants of Hurricane Helene capped three days of heavy, unrelenting rain,” the North Carolina State Climate Office said. In a blog post on Monday.
This meant that river flows were already at record daily highs and soils on local hillsides were already saturated by the time the remnants of Helene delivered more heavy rain.
As Helene passed by, it could collect some of the evaporated water as additional energy.
This is a phenomenon known as the “Brown-ocean effect” because it resembles the normal building of storms from small-scale ocean heating and evaporation.
Marshall Shepherd, director of the University of Georgia’s Environment Program, told the New York Times That could have been a factor, and he and his colleagues plan to study how much its influence might contribute to Helene’s force.
Drone footage shows homes, businesses and roads in and around Asheville, N.C. destroyed by a hurricane that has killed nearly 100 people in the southeastern United States.
It hit the mountains
Helen was so fast and powerful that she went far inland. Some of the areas hardest hit by the storm were in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina, which saw “catastrophic flooding and unimaginable damage.” The state weather office said.
As the storm clouds moved into the mountains, they were forced higher and higher. It “tends to squeeze out more rain,” said Doug Outlaw, a National Weather Service meteorologist. told NBC News.
All that rain then moves downstream.
Climate change fueled it.
Hurricanes are fueled by warm ocean waters, and the heat has been “off the charts” in the Gulf, where Helene picked up steam after forming in the Caribbean Sea last Monday. New York Times meteorologist Judson Jones reported..
The storm strengthened very quickly – a phenomenon known as Rapid intensification. Helene had become a Category 1 hurricane by Thursday morning, and strengthened to a Category 4 within 12 hours.
Climate change-induced ocean warming generally causes hurricanes to produce more rainfall, move farther inland, and pass through. Rapid intensification more often.
In the case of Helene, climate change caused 50 percent more rain in parts of Georgia and the Carolinas, making those record rainfalls 20 times more likely, researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory reported. The rapid climate attribution study was released on Monday.. The study is based on methods used for a similar study on Hurricane Harvey, but has not yet been peer-reviewed.
