Hurricane Helene Story Map is Launched | Information

Nearly one yr after Hurricane Helene, NOAA has launched a story map titled “Helene in Southern Appalachia”, which provides an summary of the catastrophe that struck the area in late September 2024. The story map particulars the occasions main as much as Helene, the hurricane itself, and the destruction and tragedy it left in its wake. It additionally offers a timeline of the area’s ongoing restoration and NOAA’s present contributions to minimizing the results of disasters like Helene.

The Hurricane

On September 26, 2024, following a predecessor rain event, Helene made landfall in Florida and travelled north, bringing heavy rain and winds to Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas earlier than dissipating two days later. The hurricane introduced catastrophic flooding and landslides to the area, which triggered widespread destruction to buildings and infrastructure. Over 200 folks had been killed within the catastrophe, and the properties of hundreds had been both broken or destroyed outright. Many within the area had been left with out energy or working water for over a month. Overall, the catastrophe triggered an estimated $78.7 billion in damages, making it the seventh-costliest U.S. tropical cyclone since 1980. Scientists have decided Hurricane Helene to be a 1-in-1000-year occasion.

What is a Story Map?

Story maps are instructional multimedia webpages—created utilizing the ArcGIS StoryMaps program—that incorporate textual content, images, graphics, movies, sound information, and extra to create an immersive studying setting. The expertise of scrolling by means of one is similar to that of strolling by means of an interactive exhibit at a science museum. Story maps convey scientific topics to life; this makes them supreme for recounting pure disasters like Hurricane Helene, because the devastation they trigger might be understood by merely studying about them, however not intuitively felt.

Close to Home

While monitoring and analyzing the info of pure disasters are a few of NCEI’s key duties, the group had by no means discovered itself within the midst of 1. Helene was the exception: As the NCEI headquarters is situated in Asheville, N.C., it was located immediately within the hurricane’s path, resulting in disruptions to operations. Employees had been additionally affected; many obtained injury to their properties, whereas others misplaced their properties fully and proceed to get better from the catastrophe to at the present time. The story map emphasizes the results of Helene on NCEI and the encircling Asheville space, in order to remind readers that no place is completely protected from pure disasters.