Helene is a Climate Disaster
Photos by Caitlin Ochs
Hurricane Helene is a tragedy. The storm dropped 42 trillion gallons of water on communities across the Southeast—enough to completely drain Lake Tahoe. With the water, came widespread flooding, power outages, and an estimated $160 billion dollars in damage.
“Hurricane Helene arrived at my doorstep at dawn with an earsplitting crash and flames leaping several feet in the air as a giant oak tree brought power lines down 20 feet from where I slept. As someone who has told friends for years that Western North Carolina is one of the places most protected from the impacts of climate change, this hit much too close to home. got lucky, but thousands of people across the region lost their lives, homes, or livelihoods. Entire towns are wiped off the map, others are isolated as the interstates and mountains roads that connected them to the world have collapsed into the floodwaters. It’s a magnitude of destruction that is impossible to fathom,” said POW Athlete Alliance member Canyon Woodward. “The people of southern Appalachia are resilient resourceful folks who know how to look out for each other in times of crisis. But our region is about to set foot down a road to recovery that stretched out over years, not months. So we need help. In the short term to meet critical needs and ensure everyone has shelter as cold weather comes, and longer term to rebuild houses, businesses, and communities.”
Current reports show Helene is now the second deadliest US storm in the past 25 years, behind only Hurricane Katrina. More than 200 people have died, and 600 are still missing.
The sheer volume of water that fell was unprecedented. The highest river levels, and most severe flooding on record hit parts of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee. FEMA has already distributed millions of meals, along with water and generators. Recovery is underway, but a week later many communities are still without power, the Appalachian trail is underwater, homes have been destroyed, and lives have been lost. Up to three inches of rain an hour fell in some parts of the storm’s path. Some areas experience a 1-in-a-1000 year event.
Protect Our Winters CEO Erin Sprague adds, “We have been devastated to see the destruction from Hurricane Helene in the mountain community of Asheville and across the Southeast. We have over 1,000 members of Team POW in North Carolina alone, and we are working harder and more urgently than ever on their behalf. Extreme weather events are getting more intense, frequent, expensive, and there are no safe havens. We must unite now to change systems through policy actions.”
Please consider supporting the communities impacted by the storm through the following resources:
“This has been the worst natural disaster in modern history for the region and a terrible reminder that extreme weather impacts are ultimately local impacts for people and environments on the ground,” said Jonathan Sugg, POW Science Alliance member and Associate Professor for the department of Geography & Planning at the Appalachian State University in Boone, NC.
It is impossible to link global factors like climate change directly to particular weather events, but we know that climate change in general can make storms like Helene more powerful and more dangerous.
Storms that originate over tropical and subtropical oceans can develop into rotating low-pressure systems, generating high winds and heavy rain. If maximum sustained winds top 74 mph, we call one of those storms a hurricane. Research shows a link between increased observed precipitation in hurricanes like Helene and climate change, hurricane development over a longer season, and faster hurricane intensification. A provisional analysis of Helene by a team at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory concluded that climate change may have caused as much as 50% more rainfall in North Carolina and Georgia during Hurricane Helene.
Speaking in Asheville, North Carolina after surveying damage, President Biden said, “Storms are getting stronger and stronger.” Let’s look at why:
Hurricanes are incredibly powerful. Winds generated by an average hurricane release roughly the same amount of energy over the course of a day as half of all electrical generation in the world. If you add that to the energy contained in clouds, rains, floods, and storm surges, hurricanes unleash a staggering amount of energy. This energy comes from the ocean and the atmosphere. Last year was 2.5 degrees F warmer than the pre-industrial average; continued warming makes the atmosphere increasingly unstable.
“While Helene on its own is a devastating blow to communities in the American Southeast, the storm is indicative of climate change shifting the distribution of hurricanes toward more violent and damaging to communities that historically least expect it,” said Jackson Yip, POW Science Alliance member and Research Associate for the Department of Meteorology at San Jose State University. “ For this reason alone, addressing the causes and effects of climate change are imperative to ensuring the wellbeing of our local communities into the future.”
Our oceans absorb 90% of the excess energy generated by global warming, with average surface water temperatures up 1.5 degrees F since 1900. A degree or two may not sound like that big of a difference, but warmer ocean temperatures and warmer atmospheric conditions, simply put, mean a more energetic system and stronger hurricanes. Research suggests that Atlantic hurricanes grow 30% faster, with twice the chance of becoming at least category three storms than forty years ago. Over the past one hundred years, while it’s unclear if there are more tropical storms overall, the most damaging hurricanes are now three times more frequent.
Further contributing to increased risk, sea level rise makes coastal communities vulnerable to dangerous storm surges. US Sea level is up nearly a foot over the past hundred years. There is also growing evidence that hurricanes move more slowly due to wind shear in a warmer climate – this means, on average, more total rainfall and a greater risk of flooding in any given area as hurricanes stall.
Tragedies like the devastation brought by Hurricane Helene are part of a global system. Climate change is here and it’s not good – we all bear some responsibility, but right now communities in the Southeast are bearing acute costs. Because we are part of that global system too, we can all do something to help mitigate future climate disasters. A rapid transition to renewable energy, better infrastructure, and collective action on climate must be part of our path forward.
Author: Alex Lee
Alex Lee is an environmental philosopher, writer, fisherman, gardener, backcountry advocate, skier, and wanderer of wild places. Alex studies moral obligations and environmental problem solving as Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Institute of Culture and Environment at Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage, Alaska. His research focuses on applied environmental philosophy, climate change, and conservation policy. He earned his Ph.D. in environmental ethics from […]