Asheville and its surrounding towns in western North Carolina had just been soaked by a severe rainstorm when the remnants of Hurricane Helene slammed into the Blue Ridge Mountains.What unfolded, starting Wednesday evening and lasting through the weekend, is a well-studied atmospheric phenomenon.“As weather moves in toward the mountains, the clouds have to rise up and over the mountains, and that’s the upslope effect,” said Doug Outlaw, a National Weather Service meteorologist in the agency’s office in Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina. “It tends to squeeze out more rainfall, and unfortunately, it caused extreme flash flooding, which devastated communities. It was a huge amount of water at one time being channeled and funneled through the valleys.”The devastation in North Carolina’s inland mountain towns — thousands of feet in elevation and hundreds of miles from any coastline — may seem unexpected for an area once thought of as a safe haven from the effects of climate change, but it’s the type of far-reaching impact that will become increasingly likely, experts say.Helene inundated parts of southern Appalachia with well over 2 feet of rain. Floodwaters carried away entire houses and washed out highways, cutting off access to towns.“That’s about a half-year’s worth of rain coming in four days,” Outlaw said. “It’s one of the worst weather events that’s hit this area in history.”At least 20 locations in western North Carolina, including Asheville, experienced levels of flooding expected …
