This article is part of an ongoing Yahoo News series on how climate change is impacting the lives of American citizens.On Sept. 25, the day before Helene made landfall near Perry, Fla., as a Category 4 hurricane packing 140 mph winds, the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued a dire plea to the nation’s media outlets.“We urge the news media to continue focusing the public’s attention on the major impacts from inland flooding expected along the path of Helene well after landfall,” the agency said on its website.Unlike hurricanes that might ravage a coastline, push a few miles inland and eventually dissipate, Helene, in part because of its sheer size and the speed with which it was traveling north, was setting up differently.“It didn’t have as much time to weaken as a slower-moving storm might have once it moved away from the record warm Gulf of Mexico,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain told Yahoo News.The hurricane also arrived at a particularly dangerous moment for some parts of the region. The two days last week that preceded Helene’s arrival, Asheville set back-to-back daily rainfall records.“Recent rainfall in these areas, especially the southern Appalachians, have left the grounds saturated and the river tributaries running high. Additional rainfall from Helene will exacerbate the existing flood risk,” the NOAA’s prescient alert stated. “Extreme rainfall rates (i.e., torrential downpour) across the mountainous terrain of the southern Appalachians will likely inundate communities in its path with flash floods, landslides, and cause extensive river and stream flooding.”For many North Carolina residents, Helene completely caught them off guard, dumpling more than 2 feet of rain in 24 hours in some locations, washing away homes, turning highways into rivers, pushing dams to the brink, killing dozens and leaving towns underwater.“It feels like we’re in a movie — like the ‘Twisters’ movie after a tornado,” Alyssa Melton, 24, a part-time student, told the Assembly. “People are walking around covered in mud without shoes. They’re in shock.”Climate change connections A stop sign can be barely seen above a flooded parking lot after torrential rain from Hurricane Helene caused severe flooding in Morganton, N.C., on Saturday. (Kathy Kmonicek/AP)While there is little evidence to suggest that rising global temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels are causing more hurricanes each year, there’s plenty to show that warmer oceans and air temperatures are resulting in hurricanes dumping more rain, ramping up quicker into monster storms and becoming more destructive overall.”We can’t talk about Hu …
