Hurricane Helene could rival 1916 NC flood, forecasters warn. Here’s what happened then.
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Hurricane Helene Aftermath
Hurricane Helene swept across the Southeast, causing major flooding and destruction throughout North Carolina. Here is ongoing coverage from The News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer about Hurricane Helene and the aftermath, particularly in Western North Carolina.
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Two tropical storms converged in the mountains of North Carolina in July 1916 and brought such rapid flooding that people in Asheville had to climb trees and hang on as water rushed past.
“Never before had so much rain fallen anywhere in the United States in a 24-hour period, the National Weather Bureau reported,” according to an article on the city of Asheville’s website.
The National Weather Service said Thursday that Hurricane Helene will be “one of the most significant weather events to happen in the western portions of the area in the modern era. Record flooding is forecasted and has been compared to the floods of 1916 in the Asheville area.”
What happened back then?
One hundred years after the 1916 flood, Charlotte Observer journalists chronicled the flood and events nine miles west of Charlotte, when a railway trestle collapsed in Belmont and sent 19 men into the Catawba River. Ten died.
Two men in a boat set out to rescue mill workers who had been hanging on all night to a poplar tree that protruded from the river. They got one aboard, but the boat capsized, leaving the those two rescuers trapped along with the others.
Peter Monroe Stowe, 48, and Alphonse Leroy Ross, 43, then came along to help as onlookers on the banks cheered and pointed to the survivors. In 2016, the Observer reported on the result of that rescue attempt.
The Great Flood of 1916 killed dozens of people and caused $550 million in damages in 2016 dollars, the Observer reported in its anniversary series.
“Streams and rivers, already full from previous rains, surged across low ground with startling speed in mid-July of 1916,” the series reported. “Dead horses and chickens, hogsheads of tobacco and bales of cottons, moonshine stills and whole houses sailed down the Catawba, Yadkin and French Broad rivers.”
Read more facts here about the 1916 flood.
This story was originally published September 27, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
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