Where the trees once stood

There’s a tranquility to western North Carolina’s forests. The quiet here is part of the reason Leo Temko and Janice Barnes chose a hillside northeast of Asheville as an escape from New York City, where they spend half their time.

Mountainsides draped in the green of tulip poplar, oak and hickory lure people by the thousands: retirees and campers, naturalists and adventurers. But serenity was shattered when Hurricane Helene blasted through with extreme winds on Sept. 27. Days of rain had soaked the soils, which made trees on steep slopes more vulnerable when Helene arrived.

Helene caused catastrophic damage across about a fifth of the region’s million-acre federally protected forests, according to the North Carolina Forest Service. Satellite data analyzed by the U.S. Forest Service’s Southern Research Station shows damage extends for more than 200 miles through the southern Appalachians.

Estimating the full scope of the consequences for the forest remains challenging, according to Steve Norman, a member of the Forest Service team that conducted the analysis. “Some trees lost their foliage early because of the wind, others lost a significant part of their crowns, and some were completely uprooted,” he explained. And some impacts may only become evident over time.

Long-term consequences may include threats to the wildlife habitat, invasive species and elevated wildfire risk. This region is already facing a massive loss of tourists who would normally be flocking to peep leaves from the Blue Ridge Parkway and hundreds of trails now strewn with debris.

Janice Barnes (top photo) and Leo Temko at their mountain cabin in Buncombe County, North Carolina. Drone footage shows trees leveled by Helene near their property.

Such dense forests, hundreds of miles from the coast and a few thousand feet above sea level, are usually safe from the fury of tropical storms. But Helene was different. Unprecedented heat across the Gulf of Mexico helped it carry record-setting rainfall and wind gusts into the heart of the southern Appalachians.

“It was a worst-case scenario for the type of tropical system that could deliver really extreme impacts that far inland,” said Gary Lackmann, a professor of atmospheric science at North Carolina State University.

For Temko and Barnes, it has been a challenge thus far to process how much the landscape has transformed.

“It has been hard to consider the forest when there is so much devastation elsewhere around this region,” Barnes said.

Temko and Barnes’s cabin before and after Helene. (Climate Adaptation Partners)

When the storm came, the devastation built up over a matter of hours, said Jennifer Flint and Rocky Morris, who live next to Temko and Barnes.

When Morris left the house for work around 4:30 a.m. on Sept. 27, he thought he could clear the path with chainsaws. As he tried to cut through one fallen trunk, three more fell before he could even leave the driveway.

He returned to the house, where Flint was already huddled in the basement. For hours, they sheltered in terror, listening to snapping branches, thudding trunks and wind that sounded like a freight train.

When it was safe to venture out hours later, they found a landscape transformed. Their home was unscathed but for a tree resting on one of their gutters. All around, barely a tree remained standing. The ground was covered in leaves that were so shredded, they looked like parsley.

That level of damage to the vegetation suggests the winds exceeded 100 mph — and in some cases, “well over” that speed, said Tony Lyza, a research scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Severe Storms Laboratory.

Helene’s path and rotation determined where the strongest winds hit.

In the northern hemisphere, tropical systems spin counterclockwise. So as the center of the storm moved over land, it carried intense winds into the region from the east.

Near-surface winds at 8 a.m. on Sept. 27

North Carolina

Asheville

Helene’s center

South Carolina

Georgia

Tenn.

Source: NOAA real-time mesoscale analysis

The same rugged topography that sent floodwaters racing through valleys compounded the wind’s destructive power. Ridges acted like the walls to a funnel, allowing winds to concentrate and strengthen. As they hit east-facing slopes, they were then pushed uphill, accelerating as they converged at the top of each peak.

East slopes, most exposed to westward winds, suffered more damage

Wind direction

N.C.

I-26

Severe damage

to trees likely

ELK

MOUNTAINS

ASHEVILLE

1 mile

U.S. Forest Service’s Southern Research Station (2024); USGS

East slopes, most exposed to westward winds,

suffered more damage

Wind direction

N.C.

I-26

Severe damage

to trees likely

ELK

MOUNTAINS

ASHEVILLE

1 mile

U.S. Forest Service’s Southern Research Station (2024); USGS

East slopes, most exposed to westward winds, suffered more damage

Wind direction

N.C.

PISGAH

NATIONAL

FOREST

I-26

Severe damage

to trees likely

ELK

MOUNTAINS

ASHEVILLE

1 mile

U.S. Forest Service’s Southern Research Station (2024); USGS

The wind intensified as it was funneled through valleys

Higher wind speed

The wind concentrated as it hit the slopes of the mountain and strengthened uphill

Higher wind speed

The wind intensified as it was funneled through valleys

Higher wind speed

The wind concentrated as it hit the slopes of the mountain and strengthened uphill

Higher wind speed

The wind intensified as it was funneled through valleys

Higher wind speed

The wind concentrated as it hit the slopes of the mountain and strengthened uphill

Higher wind speed

The region’s elevation, from 2,000 feet to 6,600 feet above sea level, also meant winds were far more intense than they might have been closer to the coast, explained Addison Alford, another research scientist at NOAA's severe storms lab. Wind readings included 106 mph atop Mount Mitchell, the second-strongest ever observed at what is the Appalachians’ highest point, and 87 mph at Fryingpan Mountain, a record observation, said Kathie Dello, the North Carolina state climatologist.

“We can get some really windy days up there,” Dello said of the western North Carolina mountains. And yet Helene’s winds were, in a word, “remarkable,” she said.

Those winds hit trees that were hardly prepared for such an intense storm. While coastal pine forests have evolved to anchor themselves against hurricane-force winds, such extreme conditions rarely reach so far inland. They have hit Himalayan mountain forests hundreds of miles from the coast, for example, but otherwise usually only affect coastal landscapes and mountain ranges, said Bill Platt, a professor emeritus at Louisiana State University.

In the devastated forests of western North Carolina, many trees were rooted in soil that is relatively shallow — only so much of it can accumulate before eroding down steep hillsides. The broad leaves of the region’s dominant deciduous species easily catch wind gusts. Their roots had grown to brace them from falling downhill, but had built little defense to withstand gusts blowing in the opposite direction.

In some cases after storms, many felled tree trunks can be salvaged for lumber. But in this case it’s unlikely there is much to be gained, said Jesse Henderson, a research economist with the U.S. Forest Service. The rough terrain and other transportation challenges make it difficult to recover any wood. The hardwoods that dominate these forests have fewer uses in construction or furniture, and even in normal times they only account for about 7 percent of North Carolina’s timber harvest, Henderson said.

The fallen trees indicate

the wind’s direction

The fallen trees indicate the wind’s direction

The fallen trees indicate the wind’s direction

The fallen trees indicate the wind’s direction

Instead, the most valuable resource may be the way the forest draws people in, a place to enjoy the environment and find peace within it. That has been interrupted. Already, the damage has translated to a massive loss in tourism for the Asheville region. In Buncombe County, tourism officials said hotel revenue dropped by half in the immediate aftermath of Helene and is forecast to remain below normal for months to come.

The storm did not just leave mountain trails blocked by massive tree trunks, but in many cases took chunks out of them when it pulled tree roots from the ground or triggered landslides.

“We’re being tested now like never before,” said Paul Curtin, Appalachian Trail supervisor for the Carolina Mountain Club.

The volunteer group helps manage hundreds of miles of trails across the region, and its members spent 43,000 hours helping the U.S. Forest Service and other forest managers maintain them last year. After Helene, the effort needed to get trails reopened is far greater.

It could take decades for the forest to grow back to its pre-Helene state. Many downed hardwoods can resprout and grow back, though that is less likely for older trees, said Jeffery Cannon, a landscape ecologist at the Jones Center at Ichauway, a research facility in Georgia. In the meantime, all the sunlight now reaching the forest floor can allow invasive and non-native species to thrive. It’s both a risk and an opportunity, Cannon said — manage the regrowth, and the forest could, in time, end up healthier than it was before.

The effort to replant trees could be a decades-long undertaking on its own. Arbor Day Foundation CEO Dan Lambe said the organization recently pledged to plant 10 million trees in states affected by Helene and Hurricane Milton, which struck Florida two weeks after Helene; meanwhile, it’s still helping to rebuild tree canopy destroyed by Hurricane Katrina 19 years ago.

Now residents like Barnes and Temko are left wondering how long it could take for the forest they call home to recover.

Barnes, seen in the second photo, followed by National Forest Service workers, surveys the damage surrounding her cabin.

As she looked across the now barren landscape, Barnes recalled how this forest used to look, and how, on hot summer days, it was some 10 degrees cooler than nearby Asheville.

She worries she may never see the same forest again.

“You come in and you see complete devastation and realize that in your lifetime it will never be back to what it was,” Barnes said.