You know, it may be hard to believe, but we are nine months out from Hurricane Helene impacting the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee and other parts of the of the southeast. I’m talking with Corey Davis from the state climate office of North Carolina, and wow, I can’t believe that it has been that long, and we’re still talking about it. And frankly, we’re going to be talking about the impact of Helene for a long time, but now we’re seeing sort of a new development, that we’re still getting new impacts from Helene, particularly now that some of that debris that was left behind is becoming a fire danger.
“That’s right. Mike, you know, we’ve now been through portions of all four seasons since Hurricane Helene hit that has given us a pretty good idea of what these storms impacts are, including this past spring during an active fire season. But if we go back nine months ago to the end of last September, of course, at the time, Helene was most notable for the heavy rainfall, the record flooding that it produced in parts of western North and South Carolina. Rightfully so. We should say, with the extent of that flooding, the number of casualties that we had and the long-term impacts that that flooding and flood damage is having, those are all just among the worst we’ve seen in the Carolinas. But since those floods have receded, we have started to see those impacts from that debris, from the wind damage that Helene left behind. Keep in mind, just 12 hours before Helene made it into the Carolinas. It was a category four storm down on Florida’s coastline, so it was still packing some extreme winds, over 100 mile an hour winds and parts of the mountains of North Carolina when it got here, and as we started getting the updates and the pictures from that part of the state, we were seeing, in some cases, entire mountain sites that had been blown down. All the leaves had been blown off. Those trees had been toppled over, and for a blog post that our office put out last week, I had a chance to talk with researcher, Dr Steve Norman from the US Forest Service. He works out in the Asheville area, and he’s used things like satellite imagery to try to map where some of that worst damage has happened and what the factors were that controlled that damage. What he’s found is that Helene was very different from the sort of hurricane that might hit, say, the eastern part of North or South Carolina, where it might just topple every tree in a forest. In this case, damage was very localized, but locally intense in some spots. That was based on the elevation. So as you got higher up on those hillsides, a lot of those trees had already started to change colors last year. That meant it was easier for them to shed their leaves, and those leaves tend to weigh down a tree. So at lower elevation areas like Asheville, we tended to see more of those larger oak trees falling just because they were holding onto their leaves. Also we were seeing where the heaviest rain had fallen, especially in the days before the storm, those tended to be the areas that saw the most fallen trees, just because that rain had weakened the tree roots. And that also lined up with the locations of the strongest winds, especially north and east of Asheville. This is where you had those hurricane force wind gusts when Helene moved through, and that’s where we’ve seen some of the worst tree damage, and also some of the biggest fires over the spring, especially in western McDowell County. These are places that had widespread damage on that rugged landscape, and they had at least four or five solid 200 plus acre fires since the spring.”
When we were talking about this last fall, as it happened, we were really talking about this as a rain event, and it certainly was. I mean, there was a tremendous amount of rain, and of course, we can’t downplay the impact that the water coming down the mountain, through those valleys, the destruction that it wrought. But now we’re looking at, now we’re talking about as a wind event as well. This is sort of a shift as we’ve taken a look back, isn’t it?
“Yeah, and a big reason for that is because it just took so long to get good reports and especially good photos and data from that part of the state. Remember how many roads were cut off? It really was only a lot of those helicopters that were bringing in emergency aid to those regions, conducting rescues. They were even able to get in there for several weeks after the storm. But I remember a conversation I had back at the time with Tricia Palmer. She’s a meteorologist with the weather service office out in Greenville/Spartanburg, and it was clear to her at her office just how bad the wind damage was at the time, she mentioned it was basically like the collapsing remnant eye wall of a category four hurricane it hit the region, and certainly with what we’ve seen since then, it bears that out. A comment that she made back then has really stood out, especially now that we’re looking at the impacts later on. She said, this is like nothing any living person in this part of the country has ever seen before, and that will continue over the years to come, especially as we’re talking about that increased fire danger and fire activity in the mountain region.”
Corey, what have we learned from this? And as far as moving forward and managing risks, where do you see this going? And clearly, we’re going to be learning more as we go along, but in the nine months since then, what are some of the takeaways that you think that we have learned from this and how better, maybe even to prepare for it?
“One of the surprising things that I learned in researching this blog post was that it’s really not those large fallen trees and tree trunks that have been the main fire risk this spring. Those are really not active yet. It’ll only be in the years to come, as those continue to dry out and decay, that they will start to become the bigger fuel for these fires, and also that will lead to a smoldering and smoke risk from those future fires. Instead, it’s been mostly that smaller debris, things like fallen pine needles and branches those have been fueling those large fires over the past few months. The main impact that that larger debris has had, especially this spring, was just restricting access for getting into these areas again. Keep in mind, this is already rugged mountain terrain that can be hard to get into, but when you’ve got fallen trees all across the landscape that is really difficult to get into those areas. Folks from the North Carolina forest service that I talked to said, as they were trying to get in and manage fires, they were having to have men and women with chainsaws out ahead of their bulldozers just to cut down and cut through some of these fallen trees so that they could carve in containment lines. And ultimately, I think one of the things that we can learn from and learn for the future is how to contain these fires, because we know as we have more droughts, as we have more active fire seasons, there will be fires in this part of the state, there are a few different management practices that can help reduce that risk, and especially reduce the risk of damage to homes and businesses. One of those is putting in more fire breaks across the region. They’ve had a lot of success with this down along the Gulf Coast, in places like Louisiana and Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina, right after that storm, they went through and were able to carve some fire breaks on the edges of their National Forest. And when they did have fires in those areas in the years after Katrina, that stopped those fires from spreading before they got to some of the homes and businesses. The other big thing that we can learn from not only now, but also learn from the past, is how prescribed burning can be so beneficial. I often talk about prescribed burns as fighting fire with fire, but instead of waiting for large wildfires to form, we’re using smaller, lower intensity burns to try to reduce the fuel load so that those wildfires, when they happen, are less expansive. You know, looking back at some past storms that have affected our region, one that stood out was Hurricane Hugo in 1989 this was a huge wind event across North and South Carolina. We knew at the time that it was going to have an ongoing impact on fire danger with how many trees that it had knocked over. But reading some of the news reports from back in 1989 it was interesting to see what people back then thought they were saying that it might be an increased fire risk over the next five to seven years. Well, it turns out, after some researchers got into some of the forests that were affected by Hugo, this was in 2013, a full 24 years after that storm happened, they were still finding fuels that were increasing above that pre storm level in parts of eastern North and South Carolina. Now these were in areas where they had not been doing prescribed burns. So that certainly shows the value of doing burning in these areas again, to try to reduce those fuel loads and make it so many wildfires would be less impressive and less expansive when they happen.”
Well, we’ve covered a lot of ground. Corey, but before we wrap up, is there anything that you would like to add that you have seen from your research?
“The other big benefit that we’re seeing now and will continue to see in the future, is from the partnerships that we’ve got across the state, across the region, across the country, we know that no one agency or organization is going to be dealing with these impacts alone. Helene was such a big event, such a widespread wind event, that it will affect everybody who owns and manages land in the western Carolinas. Certainly our state forestry services, like the North Carolina Forest Service, they’re taking on a lot of that response on state and private lands, but US Forest Service also will help manage the risk in our national parks and national forests. There’s also collaborators, like with the USDA Southeast Regional Climate hub. They’ve been a huge supporter of ours at the state climate office, they help landowners across the region and natural resource managers with things like risk assessment over fire danger. So that’s where some of the monitoring work comes in. We’ve got a fire weather intelligence portal that brings in a lot of the data that these folks need to know about where the fire risk is highest and what the weather conditions were like. We’ve also got a public facing state fire danger map on our website, climate.ncsu.edu/fire. This is a great way for anybody to see what the danger is like today and over the next seven days, and we know that these expert researchers and foresters and meteorologists will all continue to play a huge role in the response if and when we continue to get these fire outbreaks in the Helene damaged areas.”
Corey, thanks for this update, clearly, we have learned a lot, but a lot to learn over the days, weeks and even years to come, as you have alluded to, as we see the long, lasting impact of Hurricane Helene.