The National Hurricane Center has released its final report on Helene, the storm that tore through western North Carolina six months ago.
Some of the numbers in the report are eye-popping. The South Toe Township of Yancey County got nearly 31 inches of rain. Mt. Mitchell recorded wind gusts of more than 100 miles per hour in a part of the state that rarely, if ever, experiences those conditions.
Sixty-three stream and river gauges logged record water levels. Yancey County’s South Toe River and Buncombe County’s Ivy River each broke their previous flooding records by almost nine feet…