The effects in Appalachia are definitely going to run up her kill count. And also the retard Florida Men who decided to have beach party on the Big Bend coast. May be weeks before we find out about them though. They need time to wash back ashore.
I know I am an eternal doomer, but even this one spooked me looking at it. My worry is people were so used to these storms being nothing burgers that they didn't take the strident warnings seriously. Especially when it came to people on the Panhandle Shore and in Appalachia. We knew two days ago that not only would Florida get Rocked, but the Carolina Mountains too due to how fucking fast this bitch was moving. She was an unusual storm all around.
It wasn't a remnant either. It was a strong Tropical Storm just short of a Category 1 hurricane when it plowed into the Western Carolinas. That is what is so Amazing about her. She didn't become a Sub tropical remnant until she entered Tennessee and Ohio. That is fucking unreal.
The Patients were probably evacuated to Hospitals in Charlottesville and Richmond most likely. They should be okay. Virginia oddly enough for an east coast State has a ton of really remote and sparsely populated counties. So it has a robust Air Ambulance service that comes out of the tax fund to pay for. So odds are if there is a bill for the rescue and transport, its going to be credited to the Tennessee State Government.
A few years back we had an event that made us lose power in the area for almost two weeks. It fucking sucks, stay strong my dude.
Yeah, hurricanes are really awe-inspiring at times. I always a feel of twinge of guilt about saying that because obviously they bring death and destruction, but OTOH nature is wild. For all the pain it caused, Katrina was a beautiful bitch too:
They were not ready. When has the Western North Carolina Mountains had to prepare for landfall of a Category 1 Hurricane? This one didn't even come from the NC Coast. It came up from Florida.
It’s so difficult to explain to people not from the area why NC has been hit so hard. There’s no precedent for this amount of rain in the area in modern times. The roads are gonna be washed out, I don’t even wanna think about how many deaths are going to be reported from places like Asheville (lots of homeless) and Boone (college town) just from unpreparedness or an inability to leave.
I had the same kind of thoughts today. It was one of those eerily beautiful days that you get just outside the domain of a major cyclone. It's a spooky contrast to consider, especially with the knowledge that "just up the road" isn't merely awful weather - it's total bedlam. There was a time when I would have been way more confident about the economic and industrial capacity to repair the kind of core infrastructure damage that we're seeing, but lately I have serious doubts. I'm really hoping Helene won't lead to a shitload of population displacement and small town death, but I know it's foolish hope.
This is going to be a couple of weeks tallying things up. The main landfall area still has no power, and the search and rescue is going to take at least a couple weeks. There will be people who are found later because the area was too dangerous or needed to be cleared of road hazards before anyone could get to them. There will be people found in their homes both alive and dead, and there will be bodies eventually washing up and missing people marked as found alive or dead, with some never being found.
I'm guessing it was like if an ant colony was drenched in 10 gallons of water in 5 minutes. The ants know rain, but they don't know how much or how bad. They can run for shelter, but many are stuck.
We can be humans just staring in awe at forces more poweful than us and mourning the damage and loss right now.
I seem to have lucked out. Stuff South of me got blasted. Stuff north of me lost power or is flooding. All the way up to Tennessee. But for me it was just a few hours of heavy rain. No damage in my area.
