Uploaded September 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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Hurricane Helene will go down as one of the most impactful tropical cyclones of all time in the US. While the wind and storm surge it induced near its landfall point in Florida caused ample damage, the more impactful facet of Helene has been the heavy rainfall and historic, catastrophic flooding that persisted well inland, particularly in places like Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina, where some spots saw over 30" of rainfall in a 3-day span.

In this video, we'll breakdown the meteorology behind this historic rainfall and flooding event in an attempt to determine how such catastrophic flooding was possible as Helene made its way inland.

Thumbnail image via Jacob Biba (Citizen Times).

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Resources

Moore et al. (2012): "Synoptic-Scale Environments of Predecessor Rain Events Occurring East of the Rocky Mountains in Association with Atlantic Basin Tropical Cyclones" - journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/mwre/141/3/mwr-d-12-00178.1.xml

Galarneau et al. (2010): "Predecessor Rain Events ahead of Tropical Cyclones" - journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/mwre/138/8/2010mwr3243.1.xml
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Contents

0:00 Introduction
4:01 Brief Hurricane Helene recap
7:23 Forecasts leading up/during to the flooding event
11:21 Meteorological discussion begins
12:41 Predecessor rain event (PRE)
23:36 Other factors
29:21 Wrap-up