At least 30 fatalities linked to Hurricane Helene have been reported. AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jon Porter warns these life-threatening flood conditions will span from Georgia to West Virginia.
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00:00John, this has been a tremendously devastating flood event.
00:04You and I were talking about how, you know, it's a relatively short period of data in
00:09which these flash flood emergencies have been issued.
00:12Right now, you and I agree, this is the biggest, most widespread flash flood emergency event
00:16since these new warnings were instituted.
00:18That sure is, Jeff.
00:19Good afternoon.
00:20The flash flood emergencies are meant for just the highest end catastrophic flooding
00:26and the government's National Weather Service issues those to drive additional urgency.
00:31And of course, that verifies the concern AccuWeather has been talking about for days ahead of other
00:37sources about a catastrophic and historic flash flooding event from Bluefield, West
00:43Virginia, Boone, Asheville in North Carolina, Gatlinburg in eastern Tennessee, all the way
00:49to Clayton and Jasper in northeast Georgia.
00:52This entire corridor has had significant rainfall and we're dealing with catastrophic
00:59flash flooding.
01:00And, John, one of the recipes for a true disaster, and again, people threw that term around,
01:05this is truly a disaster, was that we had a trough set up shop earlier in the week over
01:10the south.
01:11That was one of the steering factors that brought this storm in, but it also dumped
01:138 to 10, 11 inches of rain in some spots before the hurricane even made it into the Gulf.
01:20And that was the big problem.
01:21We saw that there was going to be that early onset of heavy rainfall dropping 8 to 10 inches,
01:27as you mentioned, and then there was a direct feed of tropical moisture once the hurricane
01:32made landfall and those rain bands moved and the winds of the storm brought that moist
01:39air right up and over the terrain.
01:41That generates extra lift in the atmosphere and can wring out heavy rain.
01:47It's like a sponge wringing that out and that's why we have such heavy rainfall in
01:51the steep terrain.
01:52Absolutely.
01:53And here, just, but, John, we are aware of even 27 plus inch rain reports and they continue
02:00to come in here.
02:01So what is a flash flood emergency?
02:03How is this different from a quote unquote typical flash flood warning?
02:07Well, there, of course, we want everyone to take every flash flood warning seriously and
02:11move to higher ground.
02:12But flash flood emergencies are issued in the exceedingly rare situation where there's
02:17a severe threat from flooding and often from catastrophic flash flooding and also in scenarios
02:23where water rescues are ongoing and where there may be water that's just flowing through
02:29streets and creeks are rising very rapidly.
02:32So it's to elevate the concern and just show how significant that danger is.
02:38And Jeff, we've been talking about it for several days.
02:40We're seeing this now with many roads shut down across Western North Carolina.
02:44In fact, the Department of Transportation in North Carolina has said treat all roads
02:49as closed because there's so many roads that are being impacted by flooding and are impassable.
02:55Some communities, in fact, are essentially cut off at this time.
03:00Where this is speaking kind of over to the river flood aspect of these, this storyline,
03:06the French Broad River, for example, we're just absolutely obliterating a previous record
03:11crest.
03:12It's not even close.
03:14Take a look at this.
03:15The previous record was 20 feet in terms of the stage of the river or the river height.
03:20And look at what's being forecast overnight tonight, 30 feet.
03:24That's 10 feet above the previous record, clearly major catastrophic flooding.
03:29So now as we as since the rain has thankfully ended, we're going to still be dealing with
03:33the runoff and the creeks and the streams flooded.
03:36But this is going to translate to a river flooding problem here and this can last several
03:40days in the hardest hit areas.