On September 23, a tropical storm began to form in the Caribbean Sea, with federal hurricane warnings for western Cuba and the Yucatan Peninsula. On September 24, the governor of Florida issued an emergency order to 61 of the state’s 67 counties, while Georgia issued a statewide emergency. On the morning of September 25, hurricane Helene had a name and became a category one hurricane as it swept the Yucatan Peninsula, flooding tourist towns and throwing beach sediment in every direction. In just 24 hours, Helene’s winds increased to over 209 kilometres per hour (130mph), fueled by the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. At 11:10 p.m., the hurricane made landfall in Florida. Overnight, Helene had passed through Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas. As the weather event swept the Carolinas, it lost its status as a hurricane, and was downgraded to a tropical storm due to reduced wind speeds. After passing through the Carolinas, the final phase of the storm reached Tennessee and southwest Virginia, where it slowly fizzled out.

Hurricane Helene was not only a historical hurricane in its scale, but more concerningly, its location. As Florida and Georgia are tropical storm hotspots, both states prepared well in advance by issuing federal warnings. But for the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Virginia, precautionary measures were not put in place until it was too late. At this time of writing, the death toll accounts for at least 230, with roughly half of the victims in North Carolina. The majority of the remaining deaths occured in South Carolina and Georgia. Erwin, Tennessee was one of the most impacted areas at the time Helene swept through. Extreme rainfall caused the nearby Nolichucky River to flood at a rate too fast for locals to react to. At a plastic fabrication factory, employees fled the facility after noticing the parking lot had flooded, but for some it was too late. Eleven employees were swept away in the flood and the few remaining survivors found themselves lucky enough to catch a ride with someone passing by in an elevated truck. Factory worker Robert Jarvis, in conversation with News 5 WCYB, said “it was a guy in a 4×4 who came, picked a bunch of us up, and saved our lives, or we’d have been dead too.” In addition to the plastic factory, 50 patients and staff were airlifted from the roof of Unicoi Hospital.
Erwin was not the only area that flooded, with Augusta, Georgia receiving the equivalent of four average months’ rain over the course of two days. In southeast North Carolina, flooding was so severe that over 160 thousand residents’ water services were rendered non-operational after the hurricane. Over 1.8 million were living under a boil water advisory.
Climatologists analyzed the buildup to the mass destruction Helene brought upon the southeast U.S. and discovered the main reason it was so severe was due to the amount of moisture in the air. In fact, the amount of moisture in the air was 1.5 times the historic record. The combination of warm air, coupled with warm water from the Gulf of Mexico, resulted in the mass flooding. When the atmosphere holds this much moisture at once, it eventually has to release it once the air cools, in this case above North Carolina, which is why the state suffered the largest effects. North Carolina’s state climatologist said “this [hurricane] has the fingerprints of climate change on it.” As global warming continues to rise, the occurrence of hurricanes of Helene’s magnitude will become a common occurrence. There is already a second hurricane, Milton, due to hit Tampa at category five and travel through Daytona Beach. At this time of writing, Florida will be the only state impacted, based on meteorological predictions.