Is Tennessee usually hit this hard by hurricanes? I can’t recall ever seeing anything this catastrophic from a hurricane that hit Tennessee before.
No. Another problem is that we had a week of rain BEFORE the hurricane came through.
Hi, someone from Asheville checking in. Absolutely devastating here, much like Erwin up the road.
I’ve never been in a hurricane before this but it was absolutely insane. We’re so far inland, and so typically climate insulated. No one expected nearly this and it quickly overwhelmed everything we have. Just got soke cell back, I’ve heard potentially weeks for power for some and same on water.
Glad you are okay. I got out yesterday too and the scenes of the city were just an absolute mess. Glad the cell towers are back online, so many people I saw yesterday were just trying to find a spec of reception to get even a single text out to their loved ones to let them know they were still alive.
It’s going to take quite some time to repair all the damage and get power back up, but I saw the National Guard rolling in as we left with tree chippers 🙏
I hope you and yours are safe and healthy. Hopefully no fatalities in your family and friend group on the local area.
Take care out there.
AB tech has shelter available (near mission hospital), 88.1 has updates at 10 and 4 every day, i26 to the south is the only way in and out for civilians now. Stay safe everyone
I have a coworker who lives in Flag Pond and can’t get home since Friday until the roads gets fixed. Must have the interstate open again to get home.
Not climate change sure sucks, don’t it, Republicans. Anyway I live up north so I’m fine, at least as far as hurricanes are concerned.
Anyway I live up north so I’m fine, at least as far as hurricanes are concerned.
My parents came from Ohio to visit me in Texas just after Ike came through. I was going to show them around Houston the first couple of days, but we just got out of there. About halfway through their visit, the neighbor called to tell them trees were down and there was no power and it was expected to be out for days. Weather (and IIRC tornadoes) from the remnants caused all kinds of damage.
People have lost their homes. Please keep your political bickering out of this.
People have lost their lives and homes, and will continue to do so at increasing rates, precisely because of this “now is not the time for politics” sentiment when it comes to climate change. The longer we kick the can down the road, the more people are going to be killed or displaced because of it.
I think feeling frustrated that we’re not doing enough to prevent the next set of people from having to go through this and suffer this bad is a perfectly reasonable reaction to have, actually.
Events like this will become more common and widespread due to those politics. But thoughts and prayers right?
People have lost their homes. Please keep your political bickering out of this.
Wooooshh
All you dumb flatlanders had to do was build on the hills. They’re right fuckin there and none of you ever think to do it.
So the mountains are filled with vacation rentals, skiing etc. all the roads shut down, Banner Elk NC they have to bring food and supplies by air right now.
Nah it’s cool, I’ve got a lawn chair and a bottle of whiskey set aside for the end of the world.
The most unrealistic thing about this illustration is that the majority of people are recording in landscape.
I look like a maniac laughing so hard at a diner ty
😂
These assholes are going to vote for Project 2025, which would eliminate NOAA & NWS. Idiots.
The kind that gets struck in the face with a wooden paddle and it seems like they’re saying - “THANK YOU SIR MAY I PLEASE HAVE ANOTHER?”
With Kevin Bacon wielding the paddle
I live here and I am not voting that way. I am hoping this wakes some of my ignorant neighbors up.
Your ignorants neighbors will think Helene is the consequence of the Dems.
I assure you they will find a way to blame the blue team that is easily defeated with logic and facts but they will have already made up their mind.
I kid you not, on Xitter they already argued that the increase in flooding is due to the clearing of forests for wind turbines. Also that wind turbines slow down cloud drift so much that much more rain falls in an area. So, wind turbines are the evil cause for all that.
Ugh these motherfuckers get literally every grain of truth wrong. Trees do prevent flooding(studied to be an arborist and utilizing trees in urban environments for cooling and flood control), BUT the amount of trees cleared for wind turbines is negligible compared to what we’ve cut down for parking lots and industrial complexes(pavement increases flooding).
Besides, no amount of trees is going to take care of that amount of rainfall in that period of time. Even if everything was forest there’s only so much they can absorb. Some of them would uproot and tip over from the ground becoming so water logged. I’ve seen it happening in our forests from an unusually wet summer. Entire portions of forest where the trees just fell over from too much water in the soil after 3 years of drought.
See how many words and how much energy it takes to properly explain the situation thoughtfully? The morons spreading those falsehoods don’t need to expend nearly as much time/energy because they’re just lying.
It’s at the point now that conservatives are willing to accept anything in place of the truth as long as it suits their agenda. Guess they could be called “Not-Sees” given their tendency to embrace blatant lies while ignoring obvious and clear truths.
To quote (likely) John Swift, a lie can be halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.
How can you believe in this? The degree of brainwash is incredibly high.
Repeat a lie often enough and people believe it. Especially if you get then angry first so critical thinking is shut down. Help that along with social media echo chambers and 24/7 “news” broadcasts. Add cult of personality around it and you get this.
I hope it works out okay for you.
Tennessee and Kentucky are far more purple than conventional thought gives them credit for.
Fr not only do they lose the popular vote… even the red states aren’t all 80/20… there are miserable intelligent Americans everywhere and nobody gives a shit. I’ve lived in blue bubbles my whole life and spent a ton of time in red places with red people (stop, you know what I mean), and there are always normal blue people. And most red people are only a disinformation or two away from being with it. Unfortunately that’s all it takes in a two party system and they game it well. Take away angels and abortion and before the hell cult, most Americans are half decent and not Nazis.
That was the thing about Arizona it took the Democrats realizing it was a purple state and they should vote. That’s why these states seem to flip so suddenly. Then of course it’s a decade or two wait to get a state legislature that’s not gerrymandered to hell and back.
With the abortion issue there’s new organizing going on in a bunch of previously locked down red states.
Take away Memphis and see how much the hue of Tennessee shifts towards 0°.
Take away New York, or Baltimore, or Detroit, or any city really. It has long since ceased to be a state level thing. The system however is still running like it’s the 1840’s.
Tennessee is somewhat of an outlier, as its other major cities skew red, though at least in part artificially so. Nashville, for example, is part of three different districts now, the 5th, 6th, and 7th. It’s been lost to gerrymandering. Knoxville, in the 2nd, and Chattanooga in the 3rd are heavily Republican cities.
The 4th contains conservative-leaning private universities and suburbs of Nashville and Chattanooga.
The 9th District, colloquially “Memphis” in my previous statement, is the only district in the state that currently has a significantly strong Democratic voter base. If anything, it became even more blue after the 2023 re-districting moved part of East Memphis to the already conservative 8th district.
Of the districts other than Memphis, the 5th, which can be thought of as the ghost of Nashville, is the closest to even resembling purple; even so, it has a CVPI of R+9.
Districts aren’t really a good way to measure though. As you point out some of them are pretty well gerrymandered.
Good! There wont be as much flooding if we stop measuring it! /s
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Yes how dare they call out a political party for actively working to make this situation worse
eh, fuck it. Not worth engaging.
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Sorry for the losses but shit like this is caused by ignorance for and/or denial of climate change and its causes.
Don’t use the victims to silence the solution which indeed is better policies to avoid or at least dampen the impacts of climate change. And it is a political problem that can only be solved by voting for those who take care of the problem and don’t deny it.
I wish you and all the people there all the best. And as soon as you’re all safe please make sure you all go and fucking vote.
Unicoi county went for Bernie in the 2016 primaries. It’s a very small town that has gone through a lot of shit trying to claw it’s way out of horrendously bad politics in the 80s and prior. Bumpass cove, where I’m sure some of worst damage was, was the site of nuclear waste dumping, and has been the nucleus of a major swing to the left for a lot of people in the area. Right down the road is Johnson City, a very progressive college town. Dumping on the victims of a disaster because their neighbors, or even they, have shitty politics is a shitty thing to do. Maybe those school kids deserve to get shot because their grandpappy is a Republican? Yes, moments like this should be catalysts for change, but victim blaming isn’t the route to take to that.
Bumpass cove is not a nuclear waste dump site. However, there is a chemical dump site there.
That’s not just what the teenagers call it? Bumpass Cove is it’s actual, legal name?
Wow, that’s certainly a… choice.
Well, it was changed to “Bumpus Cove”. Which is more in line with how the locals pronounced it.
I’m not the most familiar with the story, so many I’m remembering wrong. But I googled it to make sure before I posted that.
Yes, the lawsuits by the community collations belived nuclear waste was being dumped from the nearby NFS, but the NRC would have been all over their ass for doing so.
The NRC clearly states there is no nuclear waste there. https://web.archive.org/web/20170325023938/https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML0930/ML093010711.pdf
Now there may be chemical dumped from the deenrichment processing, but when I researched into this topic a while back, all my sources lead all the chemicals was coming from the chem plants in Kingsport, mainly eastman.
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They’re talking about the area’s average, not everybody in it.
And if they’re not, then they’re as dumb as the republican cunts they’re lambasting and their stupid opinions don’t matter.
Either way, you’re not in the blast zone. Hope the flood recovery goes as well as it can and your political efforts are successful!
Hey, fellow Tennesseean anarchist. I lived in Erwin for a while, as well as Kingsport. Closer to Knoxville now. Are you still local?
Yes indeed. Solidarity ✊️
Mind if I DM?
Go for it
NO. I watched rural Republicans laughing that my state was on fire. I saw them saying we deserve it because of “something something heathens”. Nobody deserves it. This is a national spotlight and I’m going to be as clear as day. We have one party who flat out denies climate change, which is directly causing all of this. We have another party who is not doing nearly enough, but at least have some plans. This is absolutely a political problem, because voting for the party who actively denied this is happening is slapping you in the face. You should absolutely be angry at them. People’s houses floated away and that party is shrugging and sending thoughts and prayers. Being active now is the empathetic approach.
if you’re just complaining on Lemmy, that’s not political activism
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Man, you’re a real insufferable cunt. Lambasting the “high road” while parking your ass firmly in the middle of it. Unreal.
[Edit] Isn’t it funny when people act like asshokes on the internet, get rebuked for it and then delete their comments?
If you weren’t willing to stand behind your comments why did you post them in the first place? This is some weak ass revisionist behaviour.
Great, I’m 2000 miles away so I’m going to do what I can, advocate against climate change so we can stop having once in a generation storms every year. Seriously why does that piss you off so much?
You are both agreeing that the storm is bad yes, but you are communicating in a way that is generally assumptive and hurtful to an area of human beings who are affected by disaster
It would be really very nice if you could hesitate blaming them for this unnatural disaster until after this guy (and others) can get the water out of their houses.
You’re right, which is why I stopped. Telling them right now isn’t important. What I have is anger, anger that people in power allow this to happen, but directing it here doesn’t help. So directing it at people who could have done something is what I’m doing instead.
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You’re kind of an ass. I hope we’re not co-workers in real life or something.
Don’t worry, I work for myself.
Northerners just assume everyone in the South are ignorant conservatives. There’s no such thing as a red or blue state, it’s all shades of purple.
I mean, northerners assume that bc on average it’s mostly true. Southern states are absolutely full of ignorant people that prefer to stay ignorant and ignore the world around them. Roll coal baby! Let’s get rid of the dept of ed fuck yeah. Get rid of NOAA what’s it do for me?
I live in a deep red southern state, with a purplish metro area 150 miles away. 99% of my state will continue to vote for stupid policies that are bad for the state and the world at large. Red states exist bc the constituents vote that way.
It’s the same in the North though. The divide is rural vs metropolitan.
This is true. My extended family leans conservative but is from the far north(think border of Canada north.) It’s honestly really weird how the more rural you get, the more republican people are.
However, my cousins and the younger members are far more left than the older members(are lgtbq friendly, support BLM, acknowledge climate change is real ect) some of them left the area and some stayed, but in general the difference in generations has given me some hope.
At a national level, I think some of it just comes down to resentment at popular policies being blocked, largely because of lawmakers from southern and midwestern states. I’d also wager context plays a part in this. Sure, NY has its share of rural Republican voters, but our dumbfuck GOP voters mostly manage to just mess things up for our own urban areas, appropriating funds from the MTA budget to build bridges to nowhere in their home districts so they can point and cry about those god-damned socialists in NYC not even being able to manage the budget for a single agency (that they actively work to undermine) so they can further gut public services.
Sure, it’s not ideal, but at least we’re (mostly) only hurting ourselves. GOP Congress-men and -women from southern and midwestern states collectively hold the rest of the nation hostage through their disproportionate impact on the Senate. Whether it’s climate change, student loan forgiveness, universal healthcare, packing the Supreme Court, or any of numerous other issues, these states hold others with vastly larger populations hostage, impeding broadly popular policies in a profoundly anti-democratic fashion.
It may not be fair to the non-GOP voters in those states, it may be misdirected resentment, but I don’t think it’s all that difficult to understand why people from majority Democrat, northern states might be kind of tired of the south and midwest’s collective shit at this point. If the GOP-leaning demographics in those states could either be dropped into a volcano, or, failing this, soundly beaten at the ballot, it would go a long way towards addressing this stereotype
In that case, heres some thoughts and prayers
Helene was only a category 4 and did this amount of damage. It’s insane.
This was also a lot more powerful than the Appalachian mountain and westward communities are used to getting. They aren’t set up for it in the same way that communities East of them and on the coast are.
Yeah man-made climate change ain’t real, we get hurricanes in Tennessee all the time
And durechos in Iowa, and smoke covering the sky for months, and “cold snaps”, and hottest summers on record, yeah these are all normal things that I totally remember having as a child. Keep your heads in the sand people, it’s all just one crazy storm, they couldn’t possibly be all related
Don’t look up
“Only” a cat 4? It was one step away from the highest rating of 5…
It’s a wet category 4. It’s the type that carries months of rain and looks for a place to dump it all in a few hours. They create a lot of flood damage. A dry cat 4 would do wind damage and storm surges but not the water bombing.
The scale doesn’t say how wet a storm is, just how fast the wind is. Revising this scale is still being discussed.
I think because we’ve seen cat 5s do less damage across the nation. The category is for wind strength and doesn’t necessarily corelate with flooding /rain fall
Last I read this morning it was still a category 4 and never made 5.
Yes correct. But I’m more pointing that that saying “only a cat 4” comes across like if it was a weak storm that did all the damage. It was about 15mph shy of being the highest rating.
Its winds are well below hurricane strength now. It’s a post tropical cyclone for its spinning nature and it’s prodigious rain.
It doesn’t help when idiots keep building in flood plains.
Oh fuck off. “Then she shouldn’t have dressed like that” ass take.
Nature doesn’t ask for consent. It is an uncontrollable force. Flood plains will eventually flood just as certainly as a volcano will eventually erupt or the sun will rise. If you build a house in a flood plains it WILL be flooded. Maybe not this year, maybe not this decade, but it will happen eventually with absolute certainty.
If we make it ILLEGAL to Mention Helene Storm then we will SOLVE the Problem!
If we don’t test for hurricanes, the problem will go away. Don’t look up.
I dunno why but those highway exit designs look really elegant
They seem to hold a lot of water!
Getting some Chocolate Factory vibes, but it is the scary boat ride part.
thoughts and prayers
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build in a flood plain and that will eventually happen.
For such hurricanes with precipitation amounts beyond the scales, every area is a flood plain.
