The science behind how a Florida hurricane ravaged North Carolina [Video]

The Summary

Asheville and its surrounding towns in western North Carolina had just been soaked by a severe rainstorm when the remnants of Hurricane Helene slammed into the Blue Ridge Mountains.

What unfolded, starting Wednesday evening and lasting through the weekend, is a well-studied atmospheric phenomenon.

“As weather moves in toward the mountains, the clouds have to rise up and over the mountains, and that’s the upslope effect,” said Doug Outlaw, a National Weather Service meteorologist in the agency’s office in Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina. “It tends to squeeze out more rainfall, and unfortunately, it caused extreme flash flooding, which devastated communities. It was a huge amount of water at one time being channeled and funneled through the valleys.”

The devastation in North Carolina’s inland mountain towns — thousands of feet in elevation and hundreds of miles from any coastline — may seem unexpected for an area once thought of as a safe haven from the effects of climate change, but …