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Hurricane Ivan
Mon Nov 08, 2004
Listen in RealAudio 
Once they were hurricanes, next on The Weather Notebook.
Hi, I’m Bryan Yeaton, and this is The Weather Notebook. In the mountains of Western North Carolina, September was the wettest month on record. Almost 14 inches of rain fell in the area around Asheville, courtesy of Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne. Though these were only tropical storms by that time, Leda Hartman explains why they still had enough punch to take eleven lives.
Most of us don’t think of the North Carolina mountains as a place that’s likely to get hit by a hurricane. in fact, people who evacuate the coast because of a storm often come to the mountains to ride it out. but meteorologist Joe Pelissier, with the national weather service, says flooding from hurricanes is actually pretty common in Western North Carolina.
There are two reasons for that. First, when the air from the hurricane comes to the elevated terrain of the mountains, it gets forced upwards, where it cools down and condenses…and that increases the rainfall. Then, the mountains often flood easier than the coastal plains. In a flat area, when the water level rises, the water has room to spread out. But in the mountains, a valley acts like a funnel for the water…drawing it into a confined space, and making the water rise even higher as it makes its way downhill. All of that happened…three times in three weeks…in Western North Carolina.
Downtown Asheville flooded twice. Sixty-five million dollars worth of farm crops were ruined, and the tiny mountain community of Peeks Creek was destroyed by Ivan. The storm caused a landslide that carried water, houses, and people in its wake. Four people died and a fifth is still missing. Despite everything, most people in these mountains are planning to rebuild. Many have ties here that go back for generations…too strong for even a hurricane to uproot.
That’s correspondent Leda Hartman. Our show is produced by the Mount Washington Observatory, with funding from Subaru of America.
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