Why was Asheville hit so hard by Helene?

(NewsNation) — After Hurricane Helene swept through western North Carolina, the storm left behind a trail of devastation, leaving those in the city of Asheville cut off from the rest of the world and wiping smaller towns off the map almost entirely.

After making landfall as a Category 4 hurricane in Florida, Helene weakened to a tropical storm as it moved through the Southeast. The western North Carolina mountains were hit especially hard, with Buncombe County alone accounting for a third of the total storm-related deaths and hundreds more people still missing as of Monday morning.

Geography and circumstance played a role in how the city was struck so hard, with the storm leaving thousands without power and water and hundreds of roads closed, making it difficult for supplies to get into the area.

The flooding in Asheville, home to around 94,000 people, was predicted to break records, with forecasters comparing it to a 1916 flood from a tropical storm, which also cut the city off from the rest of the world.

The Great Smoky Mountains are one of the things that has drawn people to Asheville since it was first established. But the scenery comes with a price when it comes to storms: Asheville essentially sits in the bottom of a bowl of mountains, with floodwaters from higher elevations headed downhill toward the area.

The mountains essentially act as a funnel, directing water down toward the valley and wiping out entire towns in the mountains along the way.

Asheville is also settled between two rivers that broke 230-year-old records for flooding during Helene. The French Broad River, which usually crests around 1 1/2 feet, reached 24.6 feet during the storm. The Swannanoa River went from a crest of around 1 1/2 feet to 26.1, a height not reached since 1791.

Helene also came at a particularly bad time for the region. The area saw several days of heavy rain prior to the storm, leaving the ground saturated and rivers already rising higher than normal. Over three days, the city saw 17.31 inches of rain, breaking a previous record of 13.71 for the entire month of September.

The mountains that surround Asheville are also hindering supply delivery. In addition to widespread power and cell service outages, there has been extensive damage to the city’s water system that officials say will take weeks to be fully restored.

In the meantime, Buncombe County authorities have said there are plans to set up distribution sites for food and water as supplies arrive. However, road closures are making it difficult to get supplies to the city, with only one major route into the area fully open.