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Five Years Later, Five Lessons Learned from Matthew

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An aerial view of flooding west of Asheville after Hurricane Helene

Sep 25, 2025

One Year After Helene, New Perspectives on Our Worst Storms

The sights and stories that slowly trickled out of western North Carolina last September were so shocking, they were at times hard to believe. Swollen rivers practically wiped out charming mountain towns such as Chimney Rock, Lake Lure, and Swannanoa. The death toll climbed across Buncombe County as search and rescue teams surveyed areas hit…
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 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 Interstate 95 underwater in Lumberton after Hurricane Florence

Sep 12, 2023

Florence After Five: Communities, Disconnected

This is the second in a four-part blog post series remembering Hurricane Florence for its five-year anniversary. During the days-long deluge from Hurricane Florence, even as electricity and cell phone service were cut off across eastern North Carolina, there remained one way of monitoring the storm’s local impacts from afar. Navigation apps such as Google…

Oct 7, 2021

Five Years Later, Five Lessons Learned from Matthew

It’s a rare storm that now stands out more for its similarities to, rather than its differences from, others in its era. Five years ago today, Hurricane Matthew brushed the North Carolina coastline but still caused incredible inland impacts. It wasn’t our first modern hurricane to produce significant freshwater flooding — Floyd in 1999 held…