Helene

The storm was another warning we likely will not heed.

Hurricane Helene hit the Southeast United States about a week and a half ago. The storm was uncommonly strong and wet. Warmer air holds more moisture, and warmer oceans give storms more power. Therefore, it is safe to say that the storm was made more destructive by climate change.  Last year’s Fifth National Climate Assessment, noted that precipitation in the most intense rainstorms has increased 37 percent in the Southeast since 1958. We can estimate that Helene would have had about one-third less rain, if not for climate change.

Historically these storms have done the most damage in cities and towns by the coast. Hurricanes begin to lose power after landfall as the energy they get from the warm ocean disappears.

If you take a look at the Community Status Book | FEMA.gov you can look up the last time flood maps have been updated by state. But these maps often don’t consider the impact of climate change. Below is a screenshot of the status book page for several towns in North Carolina, including Ashville, North Carolina. You can see that the flood map for Ashville, North Carolina was last updated in 2010 (Curr Eff Map Date).

The most recent flood map for Ashville, North Carolina is about fourteen years old. This isn’t scandalous. If you go through the FEMA database you will see plenty of flood maps that haven’t been updated in a long time, and plenty that have been updated in the last few years.

If the flood map for Ashville had been updated in August of this year, that wouldn’t have helped.  The flood maps we are making are largely outdated when we publish them. They assume the target (likelihood of flooding) is static when it is not. The risk from climate change becomes greater each year as we put more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Some Rudimentary Math.

The average yearly rainfall in Ashville, North Carolina is about 46 inches per year. Ashville experienced 10 - 15 inches of rain from the storm. Some nearby counties received over two feet of rain. Ashville experienced about one-third of the expected yearly rainfall over just four days. Much of western North Carolina, South Carolina, and Eastern Tennessee saw similar numbers.

As of October 5th, 80,000 homes in Buncombe County (where Ashville is) were without power. Duke Energy, the main energy supplier in the area, said that at that time there were 600,000 power outages in the state.

In 2023, there were 28 weather and climate-related disasters in the U.S. This surpassed the previous record of 22 in 202. These disasters caused a total of at least $92. 9 billion in damages. Damages from Helene by itself may eclipse the 2023 numbers, as costs could total more than $160 billion.  

This is our future.

Look at the slope of that curve of billion-dollar disasters. That slope will continue to resemble a hockey stick as we act far too slowly on climate change and the other environmental damages we have done.

Almost no one had the right kind of insurance.

Your home can be insured, but if you don’t have flood insurance, and your home floods, you are out of luck.

Not many people throughout East Tennessee and North Carolina, where the storm hit hardest, had flood insurance.

In Buncombe County North Carolina, it is estimated that less than 1 percent of households had flood insurance.

Ashville is about 450 - 500 miles from where Helene made landfall. People there, quite reasonably, thought they didn’t needed flood insurance, so they didn’t get it. Now many people have lost everything, or most of everything in their homes, and will have to start over with no money from the insurance they were told they didn’t need.

Leaders in North Carolina and the surrounding areas are going to find out soon that they don’t have nearly enough money to make everyone in the affected areas whole. Many people will leave, or never rebuild.

Then this will happen again someplace else, and the story will be the same. It will cost too much to rebuild, or insure, and we will slowly retreat from those places.

Look back at that graphic of billion-dollar disasters in the United States. And think of the insurance you don’t have. If you live on or near a major river or coastline in the United States, you need flood insurance. If you live in the Southeastern United States, you need flood insurance. If you need to live in the Southwestern United States, you might need fire insurance. The price of insurance will only rise in the coming years, and even then, it won’t be enough for places hit by disasters like Helene.

The United States is a very rich country, where most people whose homes were destroyed by Helene won’t be able to rebuild, can face financial ruin, and will have to leave.

Most of the world isn’t as rich as the United States, and events like Helene will have a much worse impact there because many of those places don’t have the resources that a rich country like the United States does.

We are not prepared for what is coming.