'Lives changed forever' in Helene flood disaster in Carolinas

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Jon Porter called Hurricane Helene a "tragic human impact" with historic flooding to same level as the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Harvey in 2017.

Transcript

00:00It was last week on Tuesday and Wednesday that you and the forecasting team issued that dire

00:06forecast for the mountains of North Carolina, and one of the words that I think struck with me was

00:10that people that live there, what's coming they have never seen before, John, and unfortunately

00:17those words were actually echoed the last couple of days as residents say they never have never

00:23seen the damage or the floodwaters get that high. But your thoughts as you've seen the damage?

00:30Well it's just been a tragic human impact with so many personal tragedies for people,

00:35lives lost, people injured, lives changed forever in the matter of a few moments. It's

00:41very tough for all those communities and the nature of the damage is catastrophic. It's clearly

00:47one of the worst flooding disasters in U.S. history. It's right up there with the kind of

00:52damage that we had in the aftermath of Katrina, in the aftermath of Harvey, after the horrible

00:57Johnstown floods and those kind of Pennsylvania floods back in the late 1800s and 1977. It's that

01:04kind of order of magnitude forever in the history books, lives changed forever, and that's why we

01:10had used exclusively that language. We're the only source that called for a flooding disaster. We

01:15were doing everything we could do to keep people safer and best prepared for such a dangerous

01:20situation. And it was back in August, John, that we issued this warning about a supercharged

01:25September hurricane season. Well, September is over. Let's go over the forecast and the numbers.

01:31Wow, this was, and think about the context of this forecast. This was put out by our expert

01:36hurricane and long-range team after that very long lull in the hurricane season, such an unusual

01:43scenario. We were continuing to stress to everyone to please don't let your guard down.

01:47The season has much more in order and we issued that exclusive AccuWeather forecast of a supercharged

01:53September with six to ten named storms. That was the input of Paul Pastelok, Alex DeSilva, the

02:00crystal ball Joe Lumberg and team coming up with that forecast, looking at all those factors.

02:05Our forecast was for six to ten named storms. What happened? Well, we had six named storms plus that

02:11unnamed subtropical storm off the North Carolina coast that caused billions of dollars of damage.

02:16So that was seven storms with three direct impacts and so much devastation, of course,

02:23in the wake of Helene. So that was another forecast that we exclusively put out so people

02:28could be best prepared. And you know what? And the thing is, six storms, three impacts. I mean,

02:33that's a 50 percent, unfortunately, hit rate, if we can call it that, John. Again, Francine,

02:40a category two hurricane, Helene, category four hurricane. And then, of course, the unnamed

02:46subtropical storm, which we believe when the when this gets looked at when the season's over,

02:52we believe this will likely become that an unnamed subtropical storm. Listen, don't tell the folks in

02:57North Carolina they weren't impacted by a tropical storm with that system because of the heavy rain

03:02and the wind. Right. It was a significant impact. AccuWeather estimated seven billion dollars of

03:06damage in that small part of the North Carolina coastline. This has been a very challenging month

03:13for the people in North Carolina, both at the coast and obviously well inland and the surrounding

03:17states, too.

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