I do know the damage is generally extensive, but I suck at reading news LOL

I'm trying to tell my friend who lives in west A-ville what's going on, but so far all I can find is that some of Biltmore Village was underwater, a lot of the River Arts District. trying to give him specifics but I can't rly find any

any more specifics? he just now got cell service back and hasn't been able to look at any news

been looking on twitter - most of the Top posts are just climate change rhetoric, or people wondering where Joe and Kamala are :3

9/29/2024 4:17:35 PM

https://twitter.com/EthanClarkWX is the go-to.

or his fb page https://www.facebook.com/ncweatherauthority

[Edited on September 29, 2024 at 5:01 PM. Reason : .]

9/29/2024 5:00:42 PM

Trees down everywhere. No power, no cell service, no water (or if you do happen to have water, boil advisory). Only way in or out of Asheville 26 on the south side

9/29/2024 5:25:37 PM

Hearing it is North Carolinas Katrina, so expect several hundred more fatalities

9/29/2024 5:36:09 PM

Yeah i expect the death toll to rise considerably. There's still so little communication in many of these areas it will probably be weeks before that number is closer to the actual one

9/29/2024 5:50:40 PM

"The people of Asheville only dying because they can't keep their skirts down! Some people need killing!"

-Mark Robinson, probably

[Edited on September 29, 2024 at 6:31 PM. Reason : I did hear many of the breweries around are doing water container filling ]

9/29/2024 6:29:11 PM

Asheville is getting too big for its britches. Fill the backside of them britches with some flood waters.

- Mark Robinson

9/29/2024 9:02:53 PM

"Helene, go into battle and take the head of Asheville!"

--Mark Robinson

9/29/2024 9:17:29 PM

"These allegations of flooding and damage are salacious lies, put forth by the Democrats"

-----Mark Robinson

9/29/2024 9:54:02 PM

Ashville got trahsvilled ya digg?

9/29/2024 10:18:09 PM

This is so sad. Some of the pics and videos are insane, just unbelievable. So many places I'm familiar with are destroyed, or in some cases, completely gone. Lots of people are dead, and lots of peoples' lives are ruined. It will take years just for many of these towns to get back to "normal", but they'll never be the same.

9/30/2024 9:41:50 AM

They keep showing the rivers with all the debris floating for miles and I can't help but think of the likelihood that there are bodies under all that rubble that will never be found.

Sad situation, I just don't think folks up there took it as serious as they forecasted, unfortunately.

This will be impacts in the west for a decade or more/

9/30/2024 10:12:19 AM

Quote :

"Sad situation, I just don't think folks up there took it as serious as they forecasted, unfortunately."

I keep seeing comments like this on social media. Yes, they were predicting a few days in advance that it would be "catastrophic", but no one knew it was going to be this bad. Nothing like this has ever happened, not even close. It's "apocalyptic", like the completely worse-case scenario imaginable.

9/30/2024 10:32:15 AM

No one in the west (part of NC) knew that it would be NC's Katrina.

9/30/2024 11:17:34 AM

^^ it's totally happened in the NC mountains, about 110 years ago, IIRC. Whole towns were wiped out in the mountains, if you know where to look.

9/30/2024 1:10:19 PM

um, okay?

9/30/2024 1:35:02 PM

Quote :

"um, okay?"

>Nothing like this has ever happened, not even close.

9/30/2024 5:30:13 PM

^^^^ Yeah I'm wondering how this is gonna compare to Katrina.

How many people are still missing? I've heard hundreds, and I've heard thousands. I'm sure a lot of that is due to lack of comms, but I'm not sure the severity of this is really being fully appreciated by much of the country. I'm a little surprised it's not basically wall-to-wall news coverage.

9/30/2024 8:55:30 PM

Quote :

"they were predicting a few days in advance that it would be "catastrophic", but no one knew it was going to be this bad. Nothing like this has ever happened, not even close. It's "apocalyptic", like the completely worse-case scenario imaginable."

I can imagine worse scenarios. also as has been stated, this is not unprecedented. https://www.citizen-times.com/story/weather/2024/09/30/how-does-helene-compare-to-the-ashevilles-great-flood-of-1916/75450985007/

I think there's multiple reasons this isn't a bigger national story.
1) there's no infrastructure so there's no way for reporters/news crews to get on scene or broadcast live for clicks/views. Like after a hurricane in the flat lands, you can just drive to the affected areas and show it on tv. That's just not possible in many of the places here.

2) even though Asheville is a beloved city of hipsters and cool rich people, this also devastated a ton of little appalachian towns that historically are treated as second class citizens by the rest of the country. Ignoring their plight is nothing new.

9/30/2024 9:03:42 PM

Quote :

"In Asheville, areas including Biltmore Village were devastated by flooding. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Swannanoa River at Biltmore crested at 26.1 feet, nearly 6 feet above the record, at 3:45 p.m. Friday. As of 10:30 p.m., the river was down to 20.9 feet. The previous record for that location was 20.7 feet."

My apologies, something somewhat similar happened 108 years ago, back when asheville had about a fifth of the population it has today and many of the surrounding communities hardly existed. But based on the above and other reading, it still wasn't close to this. And 108 years of population and infrastructure growth kinda amplifies it.

(silly argument)

10/1/2024 9:15:01 AM

There are a lot more water-impermeable surfaces in Asheville today than in 1916 as well. Or there were. . .

10/1/2024 9:22:53 AM

Quote :

"And 108 years of population and infrastructure growth kinda amplifies it."

I tend to agree. How many Model T's were swallowed up in 1916 compared to the number of cars, trucks, and SUV's lost last week?

10/1/2024 1:30:17 PM

This is going to set Asheville back a bit on all those best places to live lists.

10/1/2024 1:32:44 PM

still one of the best places to laugh and love though.

10/1/2024 2:13:03 PM

^That's true!

10/1/2024 4:19:51 PM

Quote :

"But why was this region hit so hard? First, we had a lot of rain before Hurricane Helene even showed up. Depending on the area, we had 7-11 inches of rain in the week before the first storm clouds of the hurricane arrived. This rain saturated the ground and filled ponds and streams. Then the hurricane arrived. She barreled her way up through the panhandle of Florida, quickly shot through Georgia, and then slowed down and stalled over North Carolina and East Tennessee. And that’s right where we live. The reason she stalled involves atmospheric pressure conditions that I don’t fully understand, but the result was that this hurricane dropped 20 inches to over 30 inches of rain in some areas… that’s an estimated 40 trillion gallons of rain. How much is 40 trillion gallons of water? 40 trillion gallons of water is enough to fill the Dallas Cowboy’s stadium 51,000 times. 40 trillion gallons of water is enough to cover the entire state of North Carolina with 3.5 FEET of water. 40 trillion gallons of water is enough to fill 60 MILLION Olympic-sized swimming pools. 40 trillion gallons of water is 619 DAYS of water flowing over Niagara Falls. So this is an unprecedented amount of rain already falling on an area that had just received ground-saturated rain. But it wasn’t just the amount of rain, it was the geography of where that rain fell. The southeastern slopes (of western North Carolina) and the northwestern slopes (of East Tennessee) acted as funnels or rain catchments that directed all this water downhill and concentrated it into streams and rivers running into the valleys. It overflowed these streams and rivers causing massive flooding. How much flooding? The French Broad River usually crests at 1.5 feet… but it reached 24.6 feet during the storm. The Nolichuckey River rose to almost 22 feet. The Nolichuckey River Dam in Greene County, during the peak of the flooding, took on 1.2 MILLION gallons of water per SECOND. Compare that to Niagara Falls which peaks at 700,000 gallons per second. Fortunately, this dam held… but barely, with damage. "

10/2/2024 3:47:59 PM

I'm trying to math this...

30" in WNC can cover 3.5' in all of NC???

10/2/2024 4:17:52 PM

Yeah, it doesn't seem to math, does it? Oh well, still a lot of water.

[Edited on October 2, 2024 at 4:24 PM. Reason : ]

10/2/2024 4:23:44 PM

Surely that should have been 3.5 inches, just considering approximate surface area of the various regions of NC. Still a lot of water.

10/2/2024 7:00:04 PM

Per the USGS Rainfall Calculator, one inch of rainfall equals 6 gallons of water per square yard or 27,154 gallons of water per acre!

From google

More math to ponder, i kind if want to figure it out now

Acreage i believe is 1,472,513,593 , 40 trillion gallons at 27146 per inch, oh wait let me multiply 27146x25"

Almost 55 million acres?

[Edited on October 2, 2024 at 9:23 PM. Reason : Make it make sense]

10/2/2024 9:17:56 PM

40 trillion gallons is the amount of rain over the entire southeastern US

https://apnews.com/article/rainfall-helene-carolina-tennessee-georgia-climate-change-flood-fcba634e14a0ffa1a8e1fa85d7e2b390

10/2/2024 10:38:05 PM

^^ NC is 53819 sq. miles

ChatGPT backs up the math

10/2/2024 10:41:44 PM

Quote :

"ChatGPT backs up the math"

Lol

Thank you for copy/pasting generated bullshit from facebook.

10/3/2024 12:58:16 AM

Quote :

"40 trillion gallons is the amount of rain over the entire southeastern US"

So the original statement was more-or-less true? The amount of rain that dropped during the hurricane over the Southeast could cover the state of NC with 3.5 feet of water? (it didn't say the amount that fell in western NC)

(oh, btw: Justin, fuck you.)

10/3/2024 9:41:41 AM

The confusion stems from this portion of the statement

Quote :

"But why was this region hit so hard?"

I assumed "this region" meant WNC (given the thread title), but it was referencing the entire Southeast US.

Per the GPTs:

Quote :

"To calculate the amount of water needed to cover North Carolina to a depth of 3.5 feet, we can follow these steps: Find the area of North Carolina: The state has a land area of approximately 48,718 square miles. Convert square miles to square feet: There are 27,878,400 square feet in a square mile. So, the total area in square feet is:48,718 square miles×27,878,400 square feet/square mile=1,357,913,971,200 square feet Calculate the volume in cubic feet: Multiply the area by the depth (3.5 feet):1,357,913,971,200 square feet×3.5 feet=4,752,698,899,200 cubic feet Convert cubic feet to gallons: There are approximately 7.48052 gallons in a cubic foot. So, the total volume in gallons is:4,752,698,899,200 cubic feet×7.48052 gallons/cubic foot=35,558,884,233,984 gallons So, it would take approximately 35.56 trillion gallons of water to cover North Carolina to a depth of 3.5 feet."

[Edited on October 3, 2024 at 9:50 AM. Reason : ]

10/3/2024 9:48:13 AM

Can you factor in the AMSL of every square foot of land area in NC?

10/3/2024 10:55:30 AM

So ironically sad that the region had such an unbelievable amount of rain and now fresh water is hard to come by

10/3/2024 2:15:30 PM

My dad just heard that Butigieg just shut down drone operations in the western part of the state. WTF? Some of those drones can carry up to 100 lbs of supplies. Said they couldn’t coordinate and might get in the way of other help.

They can fly those drones low enough to stay out of the way of helicopters. So dumb.

Maybe he meant the little shit drones people are flying to just record the devastation, but if so he didn’t specify.

10/3/2024 2:50:48 PM

Quote :

"Can you factor in the AMSL of every square foot of land area in NC?"

AI said it's too hard. boo.

10/3/2024 4:02:19 PM

^^if true is prob because there are a shit ton of helicopters there and those drones are interfering with their ability to fly safely.

10/3/2024 5:01:30 PM

^

[Edited on October 3, 2024 at 5:14 PM. Reason : .]

10/3/2024 5:13:07 PM

All I know is the damn plane takes off

10/3/2024 7:46:21 PM

Quote :

" My dad just heard that Butigieg just shut down drone operations in the western part of the state. WTF? Some of those drones can carry up to 100 lbs of supplies. Said they couldn’t coordinate and might get in the way of other help."

why would your dad think this would be for any kind of nefarious reason?

10/3/2024 9:15:19 PM

Nefarious? Not at all. Incompetent? Sure.

10/4/2024 11:51:10 AM

Holy shit man, it only takes a little common sense to understand why they don't want a bunch of camera drones flying all over the place taking pictures while they have helicopters (and essential drones) flying around.

10/4/2024 2:57:22 PM

Bullet y u mad tho

10/4/2024 4:51:23 PM

For any impacted WNC TWWers, always remember this great water conservation tip for hurricanes:

“If it’s yellow, let it mellow.
If it’s doo, eat the poo.”

10/6/2024 10:17:52 AM

10/6/2024 10:44:35 AM

Clearly part of the Deep State

10/6/2024 3:41:56 PM

I used to live in Asheville and have lots of friends there. It's fucked. Like apocalyptic fucked up.

Also, conservatives are sharing misinformation about how bad (the death toll) and other lies in order to score points against the current administration.

Those people are fucking disgusting and I hope they never say it in the same room as me.

10/6/2024 4:03:37 PM