Skip to main content
Florence After Five: Inundated Ecosystems

hurricanes

An aerial photo of flooding in Silver Creek after Helene

Sep 30, 2024

Rapid Reaction: Historic Flooding Follows Helene in Western NC

Torrential rainfall from the remnants of Hurricane Helene capped off three days of extreme, unrelenting precipitation, which left catastrophic flooding and unimaginable damage in our Mountains and southern Foothills. It was close to a worst-case scenario for western North Carolina as seemingly limitless tropical moisture, enhanced by interactions with the high terrain, yielded some of…
A photo of flooding in Long Point Basin after Dorian

Sep 5, 2024

Five Years Ago, Dorian Tested Our Post-Florence Preparedness

It was setting up to be a case of disaster déjà vu for North Carolina. Less than a year removed from Hurricane Florence – our state’s wettest and costliest tropical system on record – a new storm reached Category-5 strength just to our south in early September of 2019. The rapid strengthening of Hurricane Dorian…
A satellite image of Tropical Storm Debby over the Carolinas on Thursday, August 8

Aug 12, 2024

Rapid Reaction: Debby Drenches NC in Multi-Day Rain Event

An expected active hurricane season took its first swipe at North Carolina last week, with four days of rainfall from the slow-moving Tropical Storm Debby soaking much of the state. That heavy rain fell on already saturated soils and streams following a record wet July for parts of eastern North Carolina, which created flooding issues…
A satellite image showing five tropical storms in the Atlantic at the same time in September 2020

May 24, 2024

Uncharted Waters: Previewing the 2024 Hurricane Season

Few hurricane seasons in recent memory have arrived with as much anticipation as this year’s, and for good reason: few seasons have ever been favored for the sort of ample activity that current outlooks call for over the next seven months. On a recent webinar together with the National Weather Service in Raleigh, we broke…
A photo of changing leaf colors and mountain ash berries in western North Carolina

Oct 3, 2023

Autumn Arrived and the Tropics Came Alive in September

September saw a timely change of seasons and mostly dry weather, apart from Ophelia. That tropical storm was part of an active month across the Atlantic. From Summer into Fall Sweltering heat gave way to more seasonable conditions in September, so it averaged out as a slightly warmer than normal month overall. The National Centers…
A satellite image of Ophelia over eastern North Carolina on Saturday morning

Sep 25, 2023

Rapid Reaction: Surprisingly Strong Ophelia Surges In

Short-lived but not short on moisture, Tropical Storm Ophelia snuck up to the coast on Friday and made for a wet and windy start to the weekend across eastern North Carolina. Ophelia was not the product of a tropical wave crossing the Atlantic, as we typically see this time of year. Instead, it was the…
An aerial photo of the inlet in Hatteras Island cut by Hurricane Isabel in 2003

Sep 18, 2023

Twenty Years Ago, Isabel Punched Above Its Weight

Hurricanes and the Outer Banks go together like cats and mice. It’s not exactly a productive pairing for one of them, but it’s also hard to imagine life any other way. But for decades, it seemed, there was an uneasy and perhaps unnatural truce between the two. Even as the Atlantic experienced its own awakening…
A photo of flooding in Fair Bluff, NC, after Hurricane Florence

Sep 14, 2023

Florence After Five: Redefining the Future

This is the final in a four-part blog post series remembering Hurricane Florence for its five-year anniversary. The sheer extremity of Hurricane Florence left people across the state – from homeowners to local and state officials – questioning what they believed they knew about hurricane impacts. After all, the storm and its rain amounts were…
A photo of a flooded farm in Duplin County

Sep 13, 2023

Florence After Five: Inundated Ecosystems

This is the third in a four-part blog post series remembering Hurricane Florence for its five-year anniversary. More than 100 miles from the ocean, a small pond in the Sandhills exemplifies the significant and sustained impact Hurricane Florence had on the natural landscape, long after the winds and rain were finished back in September 2018.…