Stronger storms bring deadly inland floods, but warnings often come too late
Floodwaters from Hurricane Helene killed dozens in North Carolina, where a lack of preparation and delayed evacuation orders left inland residents exposed to a storm supercharged by climate change.
Sarah Kaplan, Kevin Crowe, Naema Ahmed and Ben Noll report for The Washington Post.
In short:
- Inland counties in North Carolina suffered the highest death toll from Hurricane Helene, largely due to absent flood evacuation plans and delayed local warnings despite accurate federal forecasts.
- While Florida’s coastal areas issued early, mandatory evacuations based on long experience with hurricanes, most inland North Carolina counties treated themselves as safe zones — guiding coastal evacuees in, not preparing to flee themselves.
- Climate change has dramatically increased the amount of water storms can carry, causing record-breaking rainfall events and shifting the deadliest hurricane impacts from coastal surge to inland floods.
Key quote:
“Any given community can’t know if it’s going to be the next one that’s going to have a flood that is orders of magnitude larger than the largest flood they’ve known. But we must all know now that we should be prepared.”
— Rachel Hogan Carr, co-chair, World Meteorological Organization flood warning project
Why this matters:
Climate change is intensifying rainfall in the U.S., causing unprecedented flooding in places far from the coast. Many inland communities — especially in mountainous or riverine regions — lack the evacuation infrastructure, planning, and public messaging that have become standard in hurricane-prone coastal zones. This mismatch has deadly consequences: More than half of hurricane-related deaths now stem from freshwater flooding, a figure that has doubled over the past decade. Local governments often don't issue evacuation orders in time, partly due to terrain and logistics, but also because of outdated assumptions about where danger lies.
Related: Cuts to weather and disaster agencies weakening U.S. climate resilience
