Category 4 Hurricane Helene raced right into the Sunshine State’s armpit around 11pm Thursday night, about 10 miles west of sleepy Perry, Florida and just 100 miles from where I live in Gainesville. Then the storm shot, as though fired from a cannon, tearing across several southern states and wreaking havoc as far north as Tennesee,
collapsing interstates,
opening sinkholes,
overwhelming dams,
spawning tornadoes,
tumbling rockslides,
washing cars and homes away, and
wiping some small towns completely off the map. The New York Times ran one of the many stories headlined, “
Destruction Spreads Across Southeast as Helene Spawns Floods and Landslides.”
Florida was hit hard, but was at least well prepared, and is run by one of the most successful hurricane-managing governors in history. The states north of Florida, which aren’t used to hurricane force weather, struggled mightily. In Atlanta, flood waters rose so fast one Fox weatherman had to stop in the middle of a live broadcast to save a woman trapped in a car:
CLIP: Bob Dan Villen’s heartwarming live rescue on Fox (3:12).
Even further north in Asheville, beloved landmarks like
the Biltmore Village were underwater. Northern Georgia and Tennessee saw vast areas of flooding from rain, rising rivers, rockslides. The flooding didn’t just waterlog everything, it became a powerful destructive force, showing us how easily nature brushes aside our great works.
I-40, a main East-West corridor in the Blue Ridge area crossing eight states,
washed out in multiple spots, and is now closed
indefinitely:
North Carolina DOT said I-40 was closed in multiple locations between Asheville and eastern Tennessee due to washouts and debris. I-40 Eastbound dramatically collapsed into the Pigeon River Gorge. Smaller roads and connecting highways also collapsed. Like Highway 105 in Watuga County:
Many of these highways run through mountainous terrain and there aren’t easy alternative routes to get from one place to another. I can only imagine how fouled the traffic must be in the Carolinas and Eastern Tennessee right now. Ask yourself: when was the last time you saw anything similar to this remarkable NC DOT advisory:
All roads.
All. Now what? Here’s what the NC Road Closures map looked like yesterday:
From Florida to Tennessee, there were too many scenes of individual drama to report. In one thrilling rescue operation,
authorities airlifted about 40 stranded medical workers off the roof of a flooding hospital in Erwin, Tennessee. The waters were
too rough for a boat rescue:
The video from the helicopter is rather impressive. To give you an idea of the
scale of relief operations, the Tampa Bay Times ran a story last night headlined, “
Tampa Bay saw more than 1,000 rescues during Hurricane Helene.” That's just from
one city.
Sadly, various media report the death toll is up to 44. One man was killed while driving down I-4 in Northwest Florida
during the hurricane, which is a very Florida Man thing to do. Alas, he was crushed by a traffic sign. The reports did not disclose what the sign said. Maybe “Heaven, next exit.”
Record flooding is happening worldwide, and seems related to the massive amount of extra water in the atmosphere that I reported on back in July of 2023 (“
Overheated”), and to all the extra solar energy we’ve been getting lately. If you prefer to chew on some insightful conspiracy theories about the hurricane, I recommend
In2ThinAir.
Many hurricanes in the news this week.
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