(MOT) CATASTROPHIC IS THE NEW NORMAL

Something’s shifted. And it’s not just the climate.

Even before being named a tropical storm, I knew that what would become Mean Helene was set on a mission to be yet another multibillion-dollar disaster. I knew that it would undergo rapid intensification and become a catastrophic hurricane. And I knew that a calamitous rainfall event would unfold in the Southeast many hours after landfall.

So, I did what I’ve done during my entire 40 year career—I tried to warn people. Except that the warning was not well received by everyone. A person accused me of being a “climate militant,” a suggestion that I’m embellishing extreme weather threats to drive an agenda. Another simply said that my predictions were “an exaggeration.”

But it wasn’t an exaggeration.

The storm surge from Helene was widespread and up to 15 feet deep. The windstorm sliced through the Southeast with gusts up to 100 miles per hour. And the rains were, as I predicted, “biblical.”

Helene became a major hurricane on September 26 amid a rapid intensification (RI) cycle in which it attained 55 mph greater windspeeds in a span of 24-hours—just short of the “extreme” RI threshold of 58 mph in 24 hours. It was the second time since it formed that maximum sustained windspeeds had increased by at least 35 miles per hour in a day.

As a result, Helene went from an 80 mph low-end Category 1 hurricane one day to a 140 mph Category 4 cyclone the next. According to the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, Category 1 hurricane damage would be expected to be “minimal,” while Category 4 hurricane damage would be “devastating.”

Helene was the second major hurricane (Cat 3 or higher) of the 2024 season. Record-setting Hurricane Beryl preceded it as the earliest-forming Category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic basin’s history. Beryl became a major hurricane in the month of June east of the Lesser Antilles, the first time that’s ever happened during the first month of hurricane season since record-keeping began in 1851. More of this article (Mother Jones) - link - more like this (extreme weather) - link - more like this (flooding) - link