Hurricane Helene: Looking Back on the 1 Year Anniversary

Hurricane Helene struck the southern Appalachians with catastrophic force on September 27, 2024, making landfall in Florida as a Category 4 storm with winds of 140 mph before moving north into the Carolinas. By the time its center crossed the South Carolina–North Carolina line around 8 a.m. ET, it had unleashed deadly flooding, landslides, and hurricane-force gusts across western North Carolina. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) reported that Helene caused at least 250 deaths, including 107 in North Carolina alone. Many indirect fatalities were linked to heart attacks, car crashes, and post-storm cleanup accidents. With $78.7 billion in damages, Helene ranks as the fifth-costliest Atlantic hurricane on record, behind only Katrina, Harvey, Ian, and Maria.

Rainfall totals from Helene were staggering, primed by earlier storms on September 25–26. The NHC documented widespread accumulations of 20 to 30 inches in western North Carolina. Yancey County reported the state’s highest total at 30.78 inches, while Transylvania County recorded nearly 30 inches. Communities such as Busick and Celo, both in Yancey County, endured rainfall rarely seen in a millennium, with the NOAA National Water Center noting less than a 0.1% annual chance of such totals. Across the region, flooding broke records at 63 stream and river gauges and triggered more than 2,000 landslides, most concentrated in the mountains of western North Carolina.

In Buncombe County, the destruction was particularly severe. Flooding and landslides claimed at least 37 lives, with 16 deaths in Fairview alone due to landslides. The towns of Swannanoa and Black Mountain saw at least nine drownings as the Swannanoa River swelled beyond its banks, destroying homes, roads, and businesses. Asheville suffered widespread devastation: six residents were killed, and its historic River Arts District was largely destroyed by French Broad River flooding. The Biltmore Village area and other low-lying neighborhoods were inundated, and the city’s water treatment system remained offline for 53 days, until November 18.

The storm’s winds compounded the disaster. Mount Mitchell in Yancey County recorded 106 mph gusts, while Banner Elk reached 101 mph and Haywood County’s Flying Pan Mountain 87 mph. These high winds toppled tens of thousands of trees, damaged critical infrastructure, and left thousands without power for weeks. In Asheville, more than 25,000 customers were still in the dark two weeks after the storm. Across Buncombe County, officials tallied more than 560 structures destroyed and nearly 9,000 homes and buildings with varying degrees of damage. Timber losses were also extensive, with the North Carolina Forest Service estimating 822,000 acres of damaged forest worth $214 million.

Helene’s broader impacts across the Southeast were immense. The storm spawned 33 tornadoes during its tropical phase, including six in North Carolina, with one EF3 touching down in Nash County. Flash flood emergencies were declared 34 times, 32 of them in the southern Appalachians. Altogether, Helene’s lethal mix of rainfall, wind, flooding, and tornadoes devastated communities from Florida to Virginia, but western North Carolina bore the brunt. With its unprecedented rainfall, landslides, and widespread destruction, Helene will be remembered as the deadliest U.S. hurricane since Katrina and a sobering reminder of the region’s vulnerability to extreme weather.