It’s been a year since Hurricane Helene. The storm’s scars linger.
As darkness fell on Sept. 26, 2024, Joey Fountain was hunkered down inside his home in Mount Vernon, about halfway between Macon and Brunswick.
For days Fountain, the mayor of the town of 1,900 in South Georgia’s Montgomery County, said he’d kept a close eye on the storm, Hurricane Helene, that was brewing in the Gulf. He and his staff stockpiled saws, tractors and other supplies, anticipating they could face high winds.
But just after midnight, as the storm’s ferocious gusts threatened to rip the roof off his house, he said it was clear this was worse than anything he’d imagined. Daybreak revealed the scale of the devastation: countless uprooted trees, blocked roads and a community without water, sewer or electricity service.
“We had time to prepare,” Fountain said. “But you can never prepare for anything that bad.”
Friday marks the first anniversary of Hurricane Helene’s pass through Georgia and other Southeastern states.
The storm made landfall in Florida as a Category 4 hurricane — the strongest on record to hit the state’s Big Bend Region. From there, it carved an arc of destruction from Valdosta to Augusta, then moved on into the Carolinas and western Tennessee. There, in the hollers of Appalachia, its torrential rains unleashed destructive flooding in places like Asheville, North Carolina.
The storm claimed an estimated 250 lives, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and caused nearly $79 billion in damage, making it the U.S.’s seventh-costliest tropical storm.
In cities like Mount Vernon, and on countless farms in Helene’s path, recovery is a work in progress — one that’s likely to take years. The rebuild offers signs of hope, but experts say the hurricane offers lessons about the growing threats future storms will pose, even to areas far from the coast.
Crops laid to waste
Few farms in the storm’s path were left unscathed.
Helene destroyed cotton, vegetables, poultry houses and thousands of acres of commercial timberlands. All told, the University of Georgia estimates it caused $5.5 billion in damage to the state’s economy.
Among the hardest hit were Georgia’s pecans — not just because of the sheer number of trees felled, but because of the long-term investment they require and the future losses that will linger from each downed tree. A sapling planted today could take seven years to bear nuts, then another five to reach peak production.
The pecan orchards and nursery on Buck Paulk’s family farm in Ray City, Georgia, are 100 miles inland from where Hurricane Helene came onshore. But by the time the storm reached his 4,100-acre farm outside Valdosta, it was still packing hurricane-force winds.
His trees, heavy with pecans ready for harvest, were no match for the 90 mph gusts. After losing about 14% of his trees the year before in Hurricane Idalia, Helene claimed close to a quarter of what he had before the back-to-back storms.
He has a crop this year, though a smaller one. Paulk said it’s “decent for what it’s been through.”
“It’s like a boxer,” he said of the trees. “When the fight’s over, he’s still standing, but it’s gonna take a little while to recover.”
Farmers like Paulk have had access to roughly $1 billion from existing U.S. Department of Agriculture programs and the state of Georgia to jump-start their rebuilds, according to the Georgia Department of Agriculture.
Still, money from a $21 billion pot of disaster aid passed last year by Congress has not yet made it to Peach State farms. The funding is expected to come via block grants, which the state can dole out to individual farms and timber owners.
In a statement, Agriculture Commissioner Tyler Harper acknowledged Georgia farmers have endured a long wait for the aid, but said he’s “hopeful” money will begin flowing soon.
‘Helene isn’t a one-off’
Long before Helene struck, climate scientists had warned the greenhouse gases humans are adding to the atmosphere were making tropical storms more destructive.
Research has found that as the planet warms, hurricanes are growing wetter and intensifying faster. Some studies have found storms are not decaying as quickly after landfall either, bringing their hazards farther inland.
Hurricane Helene bore many of those climate change fingerprints, said Marshall Shepherd, director of the University of Georgia‘s Atmospheric Sciences Program.
Helene’s astounding rainfall rates and totals — which reached 20 to 30 inches in western North Carolina — washed away entire towns in the mountainous terrain. Fueled by exceptionally warm ocean temperatures, the storm also exploded from a Category 1 hurricane into a Category 4 as it approached land. And, it maintained its strength, even after traveling hundreds of miles over land.
Some of the storm’s worst impacts were in Augusta, far from where it came onshore.
Initially, Augusta wasn’t expected to bear the brunt of Helene’s destruction. But it took a turn to the east, bringing the storm’s powerful front right quadrant near the city of 200,000.
The impacts, especially to the city’s old-growth trees, were severe.
Campbell Vaughn, the coordinator with UGA Extension for Richmond County — home to Augusta — said some neighborhoods lost 70% to 80% of their canopy.
“There are areas where you wouldn’t be able to see five houses down (through the trees),” Vaughn said. “Now, you can see traffic lights for a mile that you never, ever thought you could see.”
Shepherd from UGA said the storm revealed a harsh new reality for cities like Augusta, Atlanta and beyond: Tropical storms can and will threaten more places far from the coast.
“Helene isn’t a one-off, (Hurricane) Michael isn’t a one-off,” Shepherd said. “We will see these types of storms again.”
A note of disclosure
This coverage is supported by a partnership with Green South Foundation and Journalism Funding Partners. You can learn more and support our climate reporting by donating at AJC.com/donate/climate.
About the Author
Drew Kann is a reporter at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution covering climate change and environmental issues. His passion is for stories that capture how humans are responding to a changing environment. He is a proud graduate of the University of Georgia and Northwestern University, and prior to joining the AJC, he held various roles at CNN.
