The TV station for that Twitter account is in the Raleigh - Durham area with the video from the Asheville area.
Heard that possibly 41 people have died from this storm. We probably won’t know the true extant of the damage for a few days.
No place is immune, everywhere will suffer to some degree. All you can do is pick a place you think has lesser potential for bad outcomes and has some resiliency and adaptability already in place (wealth, brains, good governance, location relative to hazards, etc.). But--you better get there soon because others will see it too and drive prices up as they move from more exposed and less prepared areas. Many will be priced out of the most desirable places and be stuck where they are at (to be fair, it might also be a choice for family and sense of place, but they will be trapped economically regardless and the government will not be able to make everyone whole). It's a personal decision on where and when to go, but dead men walking include Vegas, Phoenix, Miami, New Orleans, Houston, and pretty much anywhere it gets really hot or hot and really humid, or is exposed to flooding or fires. I would not get into a 30-year mortgage in any of those places. Good luck.
I find it intriguing we still have problems projecting a hurricane's damage potential to this day. The Saffir-Simpson scale is extremely dated, especially in an era where more robust building codes have made this model less important. Over the years, I have observed the speed of the hurricane to be more important than the size. A fast moving hurricane, regardless of size, is less detrimental than one that moves much slower, or even hovers. As regulators continue to go out on the risk curve and allow developers to build into known flood zones, this type of damage intensifies. While these Appalachian flood pictures look devastating, these types of flood have been happening for thousands of years, which should be obvious given the flat fertile lands that extend in hundreds of yards on either side of these rivers, but yet people continue to build permanent structures on them. Ultimately its sad we don't have a good system in place to determine the risk of any of these storms. WNC and Eastern TN should have been on high alert and my people in those regions shrugged it off like a Floridian living in central florida expecting a cat. 1 hurricane.
The Saffir Simpson scale is a gauge of wind speed but as a lot of recent storms including Harvey showed is that rain amount is possibly much more damaging. I know forecasters warn thet storms could bring a lot of rain and to evacuate flood prone areas but I think most people still think of hurricanes based on the Category which has become fixed in our culture for how devastating a hurricane could be.
Ike officially broke that scale -- the EF scale for tornados is ridiculous as well (largest tornado in history El Reno 2.5 miles wide 300 mph+ winds is an EF3).
I was looking at house prices off that river in the River Arts District (Asheville) last month. Love that area. I guess they'll be cheaper now.
Except this is false. Forecasters for days had warned that this storm was moving fast and would bring devastating wind, rain, and flood potential deep away from the coast, and that there would be significant wind gust, flooding, and potential for mud slides in the appalachian regions. The system was there. The risk was identified. People just chose not to listen. At some point, people need to stop pretending that we are living in normal times. The climate has changed. And that impacts everyone no matter where you are.
It's an outdated scale. Storms like Sandy were Cat 1, but due to their size caused a far more devastating storm surge. Size isn't taken into account which is a big flaw. It was actually rated EF5 based on wind but downgraded to EF3 because of the low damage. It's one of the most famous tornadoes in world history, being one of the top five or three ever recorded. It actually wasn't one vortex but multiple vortices all rotating around each other. Hell on earth to be caught in that thing.
This is pretty much what I've always said about all the places I've wanted to visit becoming places I'd be scared to go nowadays. And yeah, I'm trying to move back to Houston now, and while I love it far more than Dallas, I still can't say I actually want to come back (except for the food and maybe a few in-person Rockets games). I have no desire to live in places like Florida, New Orleans (again, great food), Vegas, etc. for the very reasons you mentioned. Visiting those places is fine, but I have no desire to live there. I'm more dismayed by places like the Carolinas and Tennessee which I've always loved getting crazy storms like this. I've realistically leaned toward some place like NW Arkansas for its beauty and still being near civilization, but then you have the crazy tornadoes and hail to deal with. I guess it's just a fact of life nowadays. Oh well. Well, let's not get crazy, now.
I completely forgot about this tornado. @Sweet Lou 4 2 already touched on why the storm was "only" an EF-3. The "problem" is that the "Enhanced Fujita" added damage as part of the rating. The Reno storm, extremely luckily, went mostly through a bunch of flat land that wasn't heavily populated. What always scared me about that tornado was how close it was to slamming the outer edges of OKC before it petered out. It barely missed destroying El Reno, and then stopped and dissipated right before it got to OKC.
There are some cool documentaries on the El Reno tornado the footage of the multiple votex is creepy.
The Weather Prediction Center at NOAA highlighted the area with at least a 70% chance of excessive rainfall at least 24 hours before it made landfall. Based on these predictions, all the state governors (except for one) declares state of emergency before landfall, including FL, AL, GA, NC, and SC. TN was the only impacted state whose governor didn't declare an emergency before landfall.
First, climate change has little to nothing to do with this. Secondly, we are agreeing to the same thing. Ultimately getting the message out sucks. Telling them at category 4 storm coming at them means little. The tropical wind storm is not that significant to them. Its the flooding. If you spent any amount of time driving in the Appalachians, you should notice many of the major roads run along side the creeks and rivers. The land is very flat and the roads are essentially built on the river beds. Its very obvious that from time to time, flashfloods wash these areas out. Its not the first time and it won't be the last time. Next time, it would be better to warn them the dangers of flash floods instead of worrying about wind speed and educate them better that much of the infrastructure is built on river beds and that once in a lifetime storms do happen.
Houston had three once-in-six-lifetime events in three years. Does the whole world need to be submerged before we can be sure climate change makes things worse?
